- in which the author
digs through the rubbish of our
language in search of
a fitting lyric
for Wu Bai's Brechtian song,
"Wandering at Night" -
I. Threepenny City
Come join in my song, though it may not be much -
a chant, a descant
on things that mystify the touch.
They've slipped from the grasp. They've been taken away
and placed in a heap,
in stacks of urban clay.
They sing it like that and they sing it like this,
from up on the rooftops
down to sewers filled with piss.
The cubes and the blocks and the regular grids,
some wires and some sticks,
and hordes of vagrant kids.
Ahhh! Let's bring it on in threes:
Man (humankind) - is she not a den of thieves?
Ahhh! The song's a sullen theme.
Sing it in three. A fermata ties the seam.
The streets and the rails and the factory blocks
unroll to a night
that waits beyond the docks.
A cap and a fur and a twelve-dollar dress.
If I staggered in,
I'd pay a dozen dollars less.
A scent and a scent added up make a stench.
It troubles your sleep?
Go find another bench.
Ahhh! It's all been sung before.
Waste (urban waste) - is it not a thing of lore?
Ahhh! That's not to say one can't
sing it again and revive that season's chant.
The streets and the rails and the factory blocks,
unroll to a night
that waits beyond the docks.
II. The Man in the Song
The man in the song went to call in his bride.
He yelled out across
a chasm seven rivers wide.
The bride in the song then enlightened her child:
"Your father's a fake.
I found you in the wild!"
The child in the song bellered out at his nurse,
"The right or the left -
but hurry up, I'll die of thirst."
The nurse in the song hankered after the man.
He said, "But I can't,
for we're of the same clan."
Ahhh! And thus they go around,
one after one. Do they ever run aground?
Ahhh! The song's another place.
Sing it again. Let's bring on another face.
The man with the pen grew incensed with his poem.
"Get out of that loop.
Find somewhere else to roam!"
The nurse in the song made to punish the dog.
"Get off of my leg,
or else I'll toss you in the bog."
The dog in the song whimpered back to the man.
His name wasn't Bob
and his name wasn't Stan.
Ahhh! And thus the chain is closed.
I could go on, but an ending was proposed.
Ahhh! They say the number three
is often the best. For convenience I'll agree.
The man with the pen grew incensed with his poem.
"Get out of that loop.
Find somewhere else to roam!"
III. The Man on the Hill
- in which McCartney's
fool, thirty-six years later,
prepares for his death -
The man on the hill dragged his old bones along.
He once was a fool,
although his melody was strong.
Before he expired, he conceived his last song,
looked up to the stars
and addressed that old throng:
"He's all I had left. It was me and the sun.
He lent me his warmth,
allotted me these years of fun.
I eat and I sleep and I stand and I run.
What more's there to do
when you've done all you've done?
"Ahhh! There's nothing left to own.
Gone is my friend from the height at which he'd shown.
Ahhh! There's nothing left to be!
There, from your heights, set a'roll your starry sea.
"In life I learned much, though I once was a fool.
There's nothing to know
at the end of the spool.
"The autumns have passed. I've forgotten my fears.
I sleep when I tire
or when that old misgiving nears.
The earth was my bed and that friend dried my tears.
He counted his days
as I've counted my years.
"Ahhh! Take up my final speech.
Care for it there, in your strongholds out of reach.
Ahhh! Receive me in your folds!
Glittering skeins, wrap me up in sparkling golds!
"In life I learned much, though I once was a fool.
There's nothing to know
at the end of the spool."
IV. The Lyrical Man on the Dump
- near the fortieth
anniversary of Foucault's
The Order of Things -
Some bricks, a few stones and a bundle of words.
To give it some life,
motley shreds to place between them.
And none of it's mine; or, it wasn't for me -
though you wouldn't care
if I called it my own.
If I had a box I'd think what I might take.
I'd row the things up
and assort them all into groups,
then thumb through the words and match them up with things.
But what of the things
for which no names were found?
Ahhh! I'd build a house of things,
tossing in words that had not been found a match.
Ahhh! Straight up an English mile!
Words would evolve their own kingdoms, conflicts, faiths…
And that's how it works, from the hills to the sea:
Our things are arranged
so that words will be free.
When words, ages hence, look for things to reclaim,
they're not to be found -
and word is spread they never were,
'til one of them thinks to look out from those heights
and learns of the waste
of which their house was made.
Ahhh! It doesn't go that way!
Turn it around and let word and thing change place.
Ahhh! Does not such interplay
make each take note of the other and its face?
And that's how it works, from the hills to the sea:
Our words are arranged
so that things will be free!
V. Wandering at Night
A room and a lamp, a collection of parts,
a singer, his theme
of one who puzzles out the charts
that hang on the wall in a shadow of blue,
reminding of storms
that split the night in two.
How much would it take to pluck off all the leaves
that gather in clumps
along the overhanging eaves?
A cat and her growl 'neath a scavenging moon
enliven the airs
that flow around this tune.
Ahhh! Is it all in the song?
Fall on the beat and I'll bring you along.
Ahhh! Shall we sing it again?
Keep it in tune as we go around the bend.
A wandering song for a wandering night.
It quiets the page
as it softens the light.
I turn to my lamp and I follow the words
descending into
a sweeping ring of minor thirds.
Are you one who knows of the clambering dreams
of one who would lose
his thread in sleepy seams?
It's only a block down to yesterday's cove.
It huddles in lanes
where your memories rove.
But memory fails in the dark where it looms.
Who siphons it off
into the reedy glooms?
Ahhh! Shall we sing it again?
Gather it in, take it up and be its friend.
Ahhh! Is it all in the tune?
Come through the shades lurking underneath the moon.
A wandering song for a wandering night.
It quiets the page
as it softens the light.
VI. Molloy Sings
- arriving, at long
last, at a fitting lyric,
with help from Beckett -
[In a trashy, cabaret 6/8]
You're here? Yes, I'm here. How I came I don't know.
It's something to do,
though, with the voices down below.
They give me a buck and I give them a page
of stammerings that
recall a former age.
To carol of things - both of things that are left
and things that are not,
things that have vanished in the cleft -
is what I would wish were I given a wish.
But what can I do
but sing for my next dish?
Ahhh! To sing of last good-byes!
Hard, though, it is, getting past the great reprise.
Ahhh! To make one's last farewells,
rhyme them with breath and the lonely word it spells!
They bring back my page covered over with signs
I don't understand
marked in between the lines.
I don't work for cash, though for what I can't say.
For often enough
it happens that I lose my pay.
The words that I spell travel on their own road,
evolving their night
and contracting their load.
Ahhh! I can't recall her name.
She was my love - or love put her in my way.
Ahhh! Release me from your claim,
horrible word that I've forgotten how to say!
They bring back my page covered over with signs
I don't understand
marked in between the lines.
VII. The Man in the Poem
The man in the poem is a man with no name.
He marks out the pace,
never thinking of his own fame.
For fame is a thing that is not of the poem.
The poem is the man
and the man is alone.
The man in the poem often goes his own way,
both readying night
and establishing his own day.
He lives on a hill, where his visitors come.
They ask who he is
and he asks where they’re from.
Ahhh! He rests in the refrain.
Watch as he sleeps. Let the measures mind the train.
Ahhh! He modifies his pace.
See how the lines have collected on his face.
The poem is the man and the man is the poem.
The man is the poem
and the poem is his home.
The man in the poem leaves his loved ones behind.
They stick to his thoughts,
remaining vivid in his mind.
A few he forgets. To a few he returns,
forgetting their names,
which he learns and relearns.
The man in the poem gathers up all his threads –
the blues and the whites,
the duller grays, the gleaming reds.
For he is the poem and the poem is the man,
and neither were there
before the poem began.
Ahhh! His cadence marks the peak,
naming his things as his things begin to speak.
Ahhh! He triumphs on his mound –
vanishing there, where the stanza makes its round.
The poem is the man and the man is the poem.
The man is the poem
and the poem is his home.