Alphabet City

Dear Readers, still relevant today, 56 years later —CC

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ‘fore the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well-hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Bob Dylan – written in the summer of 1962
Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991 by Special Rider Music

My Mom worked on Hudson Street, Lower Manhattan,
in the days when wholesale meat markets lined
the West Side. She kept books for the partners,
separate from the accountant’s; made tips galore
from the Blarney Stone chain on St. Paddy’s Day,
assuring each had their store-brined corned beefs on time.

Owners would call in their orders and ask,
“Olga, do you have chicken legs?” and she’d reply,
“No, all the butchers say I have very nice legs.”

Sometimes I call the old Chelsea-2 number,
knowing it’s been decades disconnected, hoping
I will hear her voice.

I have a few handfuls of pencils left over,
these once promoted the bygone business, pink, beige, green, blue,
I keep wrapped up in a rubber band, mostly unsharpened except
for the one in-use I wear to a nib. It is seldom I part
with one, but I make exceptions for those I know once loved her.

Chagall 2018

I await my fate:
the dying throe,
a spun-coin’s wobble.

Chagall 2018

Lazy zealous scallions crawl walls,
curl around ivy, ‘long scurry lanes
well-travelled, the trellis up-down
the rainspout, moreover pour over
puddle dimples.

Chagall 2018

Yes there are things
that go bump in the night
unlike we imagine

Dark-gray spirals
against the dark
potentially unseen

Subliminal phantasmagoria

Whispers from deep
within closets left open
alongside the bed

Creaks of baseboard
the sound of frantic
advancing feet

Invisible minuscules
there on the hem of
my pillow sheet

It is much too cold
to blame fever

No refuge even inside

Chagall 2018

Keep looking up
and you will miss
the fact that your
dog has peed.

Chagall 2018

In voluntary freefall from
a vantage point high o’er the planet,
a girl has time to adapt to gravity.

Chagall 2018

Once, like you, I aspired to great ends,
time was forever, the body fresh, second
only to my ripe mind swelling, aswim
in oxygen, blood pumped through wings
though wind was all that I needed
to stay aloft, above the fray,
at hover in the rarefied.

Now I am caught in downdraft without lift,
in rapid descent, anticipating
the final touch of earth on skin,
of rock on bone.

Fatigue is quite different than ennui.
Together they are overwhelming.

Chagall 2018

I am so glad I asked her
what the two washcloths were for.

Chagall 2018