Jack Gamble

I’d call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse.

(WOODY ALLEN)

Piano

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.

(D.H. LAWRENCE)

When I Have Fears

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

(JOHN KEATS)

Lilac Wine

I lost myself on a cool damp night
I gave myself in that misty light
Was hypnotized by a strange delight
Under a lilac tree

I made wine from the lilac tree
Put my heart in its recipe
It makes me see what I want to see
And be what I want to be

When I think more than I want to think
I do things I never should do
I drink much more than I ought to drink
Because it brings me back you…

Lilac wine is sweet and heady, like my love
Lilac wine, I feel unsteady, like my love
Listen to me… I cannot see clearly
Isn’t that she coming to me nearly here?

Lilac wine is sweet and heady, where’s my love?
Lilac wine, I feel unsteady, where’s my love? 
Listen to me… why is everything so hazy?
Isn’t that she, or am I just going crazy, dear?

Lilac wine, I feel unready for my love, 
Feel unready for my love.

(JAMES SHELTON, as sung by JEFF BUCKLEY)

The Garden Of Love

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten 
the plums 
that were in 
the icebox 

and which 
you were probably 
saving 
for breakfast 

Forgive me 
they were delicious 
so sweet 
and so cold

(WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS)

A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of someone who had searched for the leak in life’s gas pipe with a lighted candle.

(P.G. WODEHOUSE, The Man Upstairs and Other Stories)

The blues to me is like being very sad, very sick, going to church, being very happy… There’s two kinds of blues: there’s happy blues and there’s sad blues… I don’t think I ever sing the same way twice, I don’t think I ever sing at the same tempo… One night it’s a little bit slower, the next night it’s a little bit brighter, depends on how I feel… I don’t know, the blues is sort of a mixed-up thing, you just have to feel it… Everything I do sing, it’s part of my life.

(BILLIE HOLIDAY)

Having A Coke With You

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it

(FRANK O’HARA)