3

MUSIC

Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey

Hayden Carruth

Scrambled eggs and whiskey
in the false-dawn light. Chicago,
a sweet town, bleak, God knows,
but sweet. Sometimes. And
weren’t we fine tonight?
When Hank set up that limping
treble roll behind me
my horn just growled and I
thought my heart would burst.
And Brad M. pressing with the
soft stick and Joe-Anne
singing low. Here we are now
in the White Tower, leaning
on one another, too tired
to go home. But don’t say a word,
don’t tell a soul, they wouldn’t
understand, they couldn‘t, never
in a million years, how fine,
how magnificent we were
in that old club tonight.

Mehitabel’s Song

Don Marquis

theresadance or two
in the old dame yet
believe me you
theresadance or two
beforeimthrough
you get me pet
theresadance or two
in the old dame yet

 

life s too dam funny
for me to explain
it s kicks or money
life s too dam funny
it s one day sunny
the next day rain
life s too dam funny
for me to explain

 

but toujours gai
is my motto kid
the devil s to pay
but toujours gai
and once in a way
let s lift the lid
but toujours gai
is my motto kid
thank godimalady
and class will tell
you hear me sadie
thank godimalady
my past is shady
but wotthehell
thank godImalady
and class will tell

Nightclub

Billy Collins

You are so beautiful and I am a fool
to be in love with you
is a theme that keeps coming up
in songs and poems.
There seems to be no room for variation.
I have never heard anyone sing
I am so beautiful
and you are a fool to be in love with me,
even though this notion has surely
crossed the minds of women and men alike.
You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool
is another one you don’t hear.
Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful.
That one you will never hear, guaranteed.

 

For no particular reason this afternoon
I am listening to Johnny Hartman
whose dark voice can curl around
the concepts of love, beauty, and foolishness
like no one else’s can.
It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette
someone left burning on a baby grand piano
around three o‘clock in the morning;
smoke that billows up into the bright lights
while out there in the darkness
some of the beautiful fools have gathered
around little tables to listen,
some with their eyes closed,
others leaning forward into the music
as if it were holding them up,
or twirling the loose ice in a glass,
slipping by degrees into a rhythmic dream.

 

Yes, there is all this foolish beauty,
borne beyond midnight,
that has no desire to go home,
especially now when everyone in the room
is watching the large man with the tenor sax
that hangs from his neck like a golden fish.
He moves forward to the edge of the stage
and hands the instrument down to me
and nods that I should play.
So I put the mouthpiece to my lips
and blow into it with all my living breath.
We are all so foolish,
my long bebop solo begins by saying,
so damn foolish
we have become beautiful without even knowing it.

Alley Violinist

Robert Lax

if you were an alley violinist

 

and they threw you money
from three windows

 

 

and the first note contained
a nickel and said:
when you play, we dance and
sing, signed
a very poor family

 

and the second one contained
a dime and said:
i like your playing very much,
signed
a sick old lady

 

and the last one contained
a dollar and said:
beat it,

 

would you:
stand there and play?

 

beat it?

 

 

walk away playing your fiddle?

Cradle Song

JimSchley

Reapers and sowers, gleaners and drovers:
All go to sleep.
Plowers and fleecers: twelve o‘clock mowers:
Go to sleep, to sleep.

 

As far, as far as we know.
As far as we know.

 

 

Elephant trainers: wallpaper hangers: corncob pipe-smoking porters:
Will all at the wave of a hat go to sleep.
Maplesap boilers: climbing rope coilers:
To sleep, before long—or gradually, to sleep.
Congressional pages: pundits and sages: acolytes and choir girls:
To sleep now, to sleep.

 

As far as we know.
As far as we know, we’ll know.

 

 

Shopkeepers, goalkeepers, timekeepers, lighthouse-keepers:
At long last, to sleep.
Steeplejacks, lumberjacks, jack-hammerers, and apple-jacks:
To sleep, now—to sleep.

 

As far as we know, when we know; as far as we know.

Deep as the chimney shaft
That passes your bed,
And wide as the rough black roof overhead:
Now to sleep, tiny child, now to sleep.

 

As far as we know.
As far as we know.

Her Door

Mary Leader

for my daugbter Sara Marie

 

 

 

There was a time her door was never closed.
Her music box played “Für Elise” in plinks.
Her crib new-bought—I drew her sleeping there.

 

The little drawing sits beside my chair.
These days, she ornaments her hands with rings.
She’s seventeen. Her door is one I knock.

 

There was a time I daily brushed her hair
By window light—I bathed her, in the sink
In sunny water, in the kitchen, there.

 

I’ve bought her several thousand things to wear,
And now this boy buys her silver rings.
He goes inside her room and shuts the door.

 

Those days, to rock her was a form of prayer.
She’d gaze at me, and blink, and I would sing
Of bees and horses, in the pasture, there.

 

The drawing sits as still as nap-time air—
Her curled-up hand—that precious line, her cheek ...
Next year her door will stand, again, ajar
But she herself will not be living there.

The Pupil

Donald Justice

 

 

 

Picture me, the shy pupil at the door,
One small, tight fist clutching the dread Czerny.
Back then time was still harmony, not money,
And I could spend a whole week practicing for
That moment on the threshold.

Then to take courage,
And enter, and pass among mysterious scents,
And sit quite straight, and with a frail confidence
Assault the keyboard with a childish flourish!

 

Only to lose my place, or forget the key,
And almost doubt the very metronome
(Outside, the traffic, the laborers going home),
And still to bear on across Chopin or Brahms,
Stupid and wild with love equally for the storms
Of C# minor and the calms of C.

Piano

D. H. Lawrence

 

 

 

 

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she
sings.

 

 

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

 

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

Instrument of Choice

Robert Phillips

 

 

 

She was a girl
no one ever chose
for teams or clubs,
dances or dates,

 

so she chose the instrument
no one else wanted:
the tuba. Big as herself,
heavy as her heart,

 

its golden tubes
and coils encircled her
like a lover’s embrace.
Its body pressed on hers.

 

Into its mouthpiece she blew
life, its deep-throated
oompahs, oompahs sounding,
almost, like mating cries.

Homage: Doo-Wop

Joseph Stroud

 

 

 

There’s so little sweetness in the music I hear now,
no croons, no doo-wop or slow ones where you could
hug up with someone and hold them against your body,
feel their heart against yours, touch their cheek
with your cheek—and it was OK, it was allowed,
even the mothers standing around at the birthday party,
the rug rolled back in the living room, didn’t mind
if you held their daughters as you swayed to the music,
eyes squeezed shut, holding each other, and holding on
to the song, until you almost stopped moving,
just shuffled there, embracing, as the Moonglows
and Penguins crooned, and the mothers looked on
not with disapproval or scorn, looked on with their eyes
dreaming, as if looking from a thousand miles away, as if
from over the mountain and across the sea, a look
on their faces I didn’t understand, not knowing then
those other songs I would someday enter, not knowing
how I would shimmer and writhe, jig like a puppet
doing the shimmy-shimmy-kokobop,or glide from turn
to counterturn within the waltz, not knowing
how I would hold the other through the night
and across the years, holding on for love and dear life,
for solace and kindness, learning the dance as we go,
learning from those first, awkward, shuffling steps,
that sweetness and doo-wop back at the beginning.

The Persistence of Song

Howard Moss

 

 

 

 

Although it is not yet evening,
The secretaries have changed their frocks
As if it were time for dancing,
And locked up in the scholars’ books
There is a kind of rejoicing,
There is a kind of singing
That even the dark stone canyon makes
As though all fountains were going
At once, and the color flowed from bricks
In one wild, lit upsurging.

 

What is the weather doing?
And who arrived on a scallop shell
With the smell of the sea this morning?
—Creating a small upheaval
High above the scaffolding
By saying, “All will be well.
There is a kind of rejoicing.”

 

Is there a kind of rejoicing
In saying, “All will be well?”
High above the scaffolding,
Creating a small upheaval,
The smell of the sea this morning
Arrived on a scallop shell.
What was the weather doing
In one wild, lit upsurging?
At once, the color flowed from bricks
As though all fountains were going,
And even the dark stone canyon makes
Here a kind of singing,
And there a kind of rejoicing,
And locked up in the scholars’ books
There is a time for dancing
When the secretaries have changed their frocks,
And though it is not yet evening,

 

There is the persistence of song.

Ooly Pop a Cow

David Huddle

 

 

for Bess and Molly

 

 

 

My brother Charles
brought home the news
the kids were saying
take a flying leap
and eat me raw
and be bop a lula.

 

Forty miles he rode
the bus there and back.
The dog and I met him
at the door, panting
for hoke poke, hoke
de waddy waddy hoke poke.

 

In Cu Chi, Vietnam,
I heard tapes somebody’s
sister sent of wild thing,
I think I love you
and hey now, what’s that
sound, everybody look what’s ...
Now it’s my daughters
bringing home no-duh,
rock out, whatever,
like I totally
paused, and like
I’m like ...

 

 

I’m like Mother, her hands
in biscuit dough,
her ears turning red
from ain’ nothin butta,
blue monday, and
tutti frutti, aw rooty!

Elevator Music

Henry Taylor

 

 

 

A tune with no more substance than the air,
performed on underwater instruments,
is proper to this short lift from the earth.
It hovers as we draw into ourselves
and turn our reverent eyes toward the lights
that count us to our various destinies.
We’re all in this together, the song says,
and later we’ll descend. The melody
is like a name we don’t recall just now
that still keeps on insisting it is there.

The Grain of Sound

Robert Morgan

 

 

 

A banjo maker in the mountains,
when looking out for wood to carve
an instrument, will walk among
the trees and knock on trunks. He’ll hit
the bark and listen for a note.
A hickory makes the brightest sound;
the poplar has a mellow ease.
But only straightest grain will keep
the purity of tone, the sought
for depth that makes the licks sparkle.
A banjo has a shining shiver.
Its twangs will glitter like the light
on splashing water, even though
its face is just a drum of hide
of cow, or cat, or even skunk.
The hide will magnify the note,
the sad of honest pain, the chill
blood-song, lament, confession, haunt,
as tree will sing again from root
and vein and sap and twig in wind
and cat will moan as hand plucks nerve,
picks bone and skin and gut and pricks
the heart as blood will answer blood
and love begins to knock along the grain.

I Will Make You Brooches

Robert Louis Stevenson

 

 

 

 

I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.
I will make a palace fit for you and me
Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.

 

I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,
Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom,
And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white
In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.

 

And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.

The Dance

C. K. Williams

 

 

 

 

A middle-aged woman, quite plain, to be polite about it, and somewhat stout, to be more courteous still,

but when she and the rather good-looking, much younger man she’s with get up to dance,

her forearm descends with such delicate lightness, such restrained but confident ardor athwart his shoulder,

drawing him to her with such a firm, compelling warmth, and moving him with effortless grace

into the union she’s instantly established with the not at all rhythmically solid music in this second-rate café,

 

that something in the rest of us, some doubt about ourselves, some sad conjecture, seems to be allayed,

nothing that we’d ever thought of as a real lack, nothing not to be admired or be repentant for,

but something to which we’ve never adequately given credence,

which might have consoling implications about how we misbelieve ourselves, and so the world,

that world beyond us which so often disappoints, but which sometimes shows us, lovely, what we are.

The Investment

Robert Frost

 

 

 

 

Over back where they speak of life as staying
(“You couldn’t call it living, for it ain‘t”),
There was an old, old house renewed with paint,
And in it a piano loudly playing.

 

Out in the plowed ground in the cold a digger,
Among unearthed potatoes standing still,
Was counting winter dinners, one a hill,
With half an ear to the piano’s vigor.

 

All that piano and new paint back there,
Was it some money suddenly come into?
Or some extravagance young love had been to?
Or old love on an impulse not to care—

 

Not to sink under being man and wife,
But get some color and music out of life?

The Dumka

B. H. Fairchild

 

 

 

 

His parents would sit alone together
on the blue divan in the small living room
listening to Dvorak’s piano quintet.
They would sit there in their old age,
side by side, quite still, backs rigid, hands
in their laps, and look straight ahead
at the yellow light of the phonograph
that seemed as distant as a lamplit
window seen across the plains late at night.
They would sit quietly as something dense

 

and radiant swirled around them, something
like the dust storms of the thirties that began
by smearing the sky green with doom
but afterwards drenched the air with an amber
glow and then vanished, leaving profiles
of children on pillows and a pale gauze
over mantles and table tops. But it was
the memory of dust that encircled them now
and made them smile faintly and raise
or bow their heads as they spoke about

 

the farm in twilight with piano music
spiraling out across red roads and fields
of maize, bread lines in the city, women
and men lining main street like mannequins,
and then the war, the white frame rent house,
and the homecoming, the homecoming,
the homecoming, and afterwards, green lawns
and a new piano with its mahogany gleam
like pond ice at dawn, and now alone
in the house in the vanishing neighborhood,

 

the slow mornings of coffee and newspapers
and evenings of music and scattered bits
of talk like leaves suddenly fallen before
one notices the new season. And they would sit
there alone and soon he would reach across
and lift her hand as if it were the last unbroken
leaf and he would hold her hand in his hand
for a long time and they would look far off
into the music of their lives as they sat alone
together in the room in the house in Kansas.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The Green Street Mortuary Marching Band
marches right down Green Street
and turns into Columbus Avenue
where all the café sitters at
the sidewalk café tables
sit talking and laughing and
looking right through it

as if it happened every day in
little old wooden North Beach San Francisco
but at the same time feeling thrilled
by the stirring sound of the gallant marching band
as if it were celebrating life and
never heard of death

 

 

And right behind it comes the open hearse
with the closed casket and the
big framed picture under glass propped up
showing the patriarch who
has just croaked

And now all seven members of
the Green Street Mortuary Marching Band
with the faded gold braid on their
beat-up captains’ hats
raise their bent axes and
start blowing all more or less
together and
out comes this Onward Christian Soldiers like
you heard it once upon a time only
much slower with a dead beat

 

 

And now you see all the relatives behind the
closed glass windows of the long black cars and
their faces are all shiny like they
been weeping with washcloths and
all super serious
like as if the bottom has just dropped out of
their private markets and
there’s the widow all in weeds, and the sister with the
bent frame and the mad brother who never got through school
and Uncle Louie with the wig and there they all are assembled
together and facing each other maybe for the first time in a long
time but their masks and public faces are all in place as they face
outward behind the traveling corpse up ahead and oompah oom
pah goes the band very slow with the trombones and the tuba
and the trumpets and the big bass drum and the corpse hears
nothing or everything and it’s a glorious autumn day in old
North Beach if only he could have lived to see it Only we
wouldn’t have had the band who half an hour later can be seen
straggling back silent along the sidewalks looking like hungover
brokendown Irish bartenders dying for a drink or a last hurrah