The End of the World

Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb
Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing -- nothing at all.

-- Archibald MacLeish

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Mr.Tambourine Man

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle-jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Though I know that evenin's empire has returned into sand,
Vanished from my hand,
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping.
My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet,
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming.

Hey, Mr.Tambourine Man, etc.

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin' ship,
My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip,
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels
To be wanderin'.
I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way,
I promise to go under it.

Hey, Mr.Tambourine Man, etc.

Though you might hear laughin', spinnin', swingin' madly across the sun,

It's not aimed at anyone, it's just escapin' on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin'.
And if you hear vague traces of skippin' reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it's just a ragged clown behind
I wouldn't pay it any mind, it's just a shadow you're
Seeing' that he's chasing

Hey, Mr.Tambourine Man, etc.

Then take me dissapearing through the smoke rings of my mind,
down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
out to the windy beach far from the twisted reach,
of crazy sorrow, yes to dance beneath the diamond sky,
with one hand waving free, silhouetted by the sea,
circled by the circus sands, with all memory and fate,
driven deep beneath the waves,
let me forget about today until tomorrow.


-- Bob Dylan

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When I was Young and Ignorant

When I was young and ignorant I loved a Miss McDougall,
Our days were spent in happiness, although our means were frugal;
We did not sigh for worldly wealth, for vain and tawdry treasures,
We were a simple country pair with simple country pleasures.
Beneath the village chestnut-tree it was our joy to meet once;
We used to tread the dewy fields with wonder-waking feet once;
We wandered once in leafy lanes and walked in Woodlands shady;
But now she's gone to Birmingham to be a Bearded Lady

I loved her as I loved my life when I was young and tender,
And happily our time was spent although our means were slender.
We used to pass the golden days in countrified pursuits once;
We walked through simple country bogs in simple country boots once.
High hopes of happiness I had, but now my hopes are zero,
Alas! My love has left me now to carve her own career O;
Not all the hopes of her I had of her are worth a maravedi;
My love has gone to Birmingham to be a Bearded Lady.

My love now dwells in circus halls with clowns and tight-rope dancers,
Where dromedaries play bassoons and sea-lions do the lancers;
She moves amongst trick-bicyclists, buffoons and comic waiters,
With elephants and acrobats and prestidigitators.
No longer daily by my side she wanders through the hay now,
The glamour of the public eye has lured are far away now.
Remorseless Fates, my tender hopes how cruelly betrayed ye!
My love has gone to Birmingham to be a Bearded Lady.

When I was young and ignorant I loved a Miss McDougall;
But that was e'er she heard the call of Fame's imperious bugle.
I thought her kind as she was fair, but I was green and calfish;
My love, though brighter than a star, was colder than a starfish.
High hopes of happiness I had when I was young and tender;
But time and tide have falsified my juvenile agenda.
Farewell, my castle is in the air! Phantasmal mansions, fade ye!
My love has gone to Birmingham to be a Bearded Lady.

-- Patrick Barrington

======================================

THE CIRCUS

You say we need to be happy because

The material world is a door

That never closes, a jewel

Of astonishing purity,A love incapable of weakening,

Plantlife that simply grows and grows.

It's a business that won't lay off its employees,

And a terrific circus.

See? See? Of course I ...

Ostriker, Alicia

The circus. (poem)
Nation, The, March, 1989 by Ostriker, Alicia



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http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.4/cohn.htm


By the time of Whitman's death in March 1892, the small book had gone through eight, nine, or, as Sam Abrams has pointed out in The Neglected Walt Whitman: Vital Texts, maybe ten editions. Leaves grew from its initial twelve poems to the 289 poems of the death-bed edition (4-5). Of Whitman's death, there remains the strange case of Guillaume Apollinaire's April Fool's Day accounts in the Mercure de France (1913). Apollinaire composed a false description of Whitman's funeral as being held in a traveling circus tent complete with a barbecue, barrels of beer, tubs of whisky, vats of lemonade and sparkling pure water. Three brass bands played continuously and over 3500 men women and children—everyone Whitman had every known, all without invitation––as the spirit moved them giving spontaneous readings and remembrances or song punctuated by pounding on the coffin until at dusk the entire party, enjoined by crowds–– workmen searching after damages, unshaved sailors, calm martyrs, old-faced infants, the 28 bathers from "Song of Myself," nurses, army surgeons, buggy drivers, artillerists, the lunatic and abolitionist just out of the whip-stocks, politicians and journalists, mothers and fathers of boys killed in the war he had held in his arms when they died, dwarfs and harlots and poets he had known and loved over the years––moved to the cemetery outside Camden where 6 drunken pall bearers wielded the poet's remains to his tomb as the strains of minstrels played New Orleans rag-time.