A story called "The Book," and it is the same characters.
He was bringing the book in a gesture of final hope,
something he had found in a bookstore
just after leaving her on bright and sunny day.
And words to an old English time and tune,
measure of clear voice and air.
She liked to sing in a high clear voice,
a little thick at times, chirp, like a secure bird.
The book was a paperback collection
of English airs and folk songs edited by authentic people
she would be careful to see.
Down the street, walking heavily along,
it was time to be not drunk, but the afternoon
was heavy and slow.
He was drunk with beer and dirtiness
all over his body, sluggish, sweaty clothing.
Under the dusty sun, walking more than he was used to.
The streets were hard and barren.
She had a number of songs she would sing.
At one time, it is possible that she might have been
trained to sing professionally.
It was a leftover hope in that sense,
a little of an ability put to fond memories' sake
and crusted to reappear always.
They do not forget what they meant to do
but just don't do it.
She sang not happily altogether, not wildly certainly,
nor loudly, sadly, strongly, lonely,
just enough to be the memory.
Turn on the radio, the Victrola, and listen.
Concerts and early training were the strengths she had.
She had painted also.
She had been trained in that in a large, gray building
along a dark avenue of the city.
It was a timorous place yet aggressive
with age and authority of that kind.
He once rented a room on that street.
He had to go through the living room of the owners
to get to his own room through theirs to the back.
He moved his things in, sat on the bed for only a few minutes,
and then apologized and moved out.
Had he apologized the sins of walking or the sins of memory,
and she was not in that at all.
He lit a cigarette and considered his direction.
A drugstore lay on his left at some distance,
a flat square with a few trees and the triangle beyond it.
Then across, a row of usual businesses
along the same avenue.
She was there somewhere in that maze,
at another crossing of a street, a hotel for women, YWCA,
kindest of all refuges, heaps of people
who must be secured for a moment against sex, age,
and other identity.
Earlier, "I didn't expect you so quickly.
I had just come down."
He had called her at the desk.
A woman watching him in dull glasses,
piled hair, but prim and not friendly.
"Who came here?
Ask for your wife, mother, sister.
The girlfriend, is she here?"
Like a morgue of women that sex all of them,
beds and beds and beds of them.
Think of the sound-- snoring, wheezing, blowing, puffing,
breathing in beds and sleep.
"Not about that," he wanted to say.
"Don't," she was saying, and she was crying.
"I don't want to go through it all again.
I can't tell you more.
I don't know more.
There isn't any more to tell."
"Explain."
"I was raped on the boat, not raped, but like that.
I lost $1,000 in a purse on the train.
I bought a lot of Italian blouses.
I do what I want to now."
What is the English song?
Something like, "I want to go where the birds go."
Not quite, but that flavor of old softness,
a deep blanket of cold, clear warmth.
"Hush, they are singing, 'Down in old Bethlehem,
the lights are low.'" "No.
But carefully, you can't get it right all the time.
The note goes up there, then one, two,
down it goes, lightly.
'They came upon not so common it is a statue weeping at grief."
It was a brutal dullness that he felt walking.
Having intended to do it, he wanted
to do it and with the book in his hand wet
with the sweat of his hand from walking.
It was not new.
It was a dirty old plan with the walking.
The old book worn with the intention of taking it
to her as though next week he had remembered a plan, which
he had thought of and done, accomplished,
paid bill of something or other.
No history in that.
Nothing solved.
No answer because he was being overcome
by the action of walking toward her
but time climbing up on him as though it were a weight he
accumulated step by step.
"Can't you sing too?"
"No.
I don't feel easy doing it.
I try too hard enough.
Try too hard enough."
"No."
"But I can't."
"Can't you?"
"No."
Will he ever see her again in this life, he thought.
This day, perhaps, again.
Talking at lunch with food he did not like, want to eat,
a failure in that so reminiscent of his meals with her.
And for years to come, quite the same.
Oh, he wouldn't change.
That was the song.
He had meant everything he had ever done,
not to do many things, to do a few also.
Well, where do the birds go when the summer sun is through?
No, but closer, a little closer each time.
The words go along a line in movement with the song.
The song isn't that way, a song of words, that tell what?
Oh, common things of women and men
lads and lasses hay, corn fields, horses, old roads,
stones and crows, roses and one begins.
I remember, I remember the house.
Not so common, but later, earlier into some practice
of air and voice he knew nothing of, say it slowly.
Waly, waly, oh, love is bonny a little while while it is new."
That was the true one, the right one, sing it.
It was in the book which he held in his hand, a documented
pair who had done this election assured her, would assure her,
they were all there.
"Sing."
"The street is the book is in the garden, sitting
on your knee, my dear old England."
Sing of her that is the garden's insolence
that bent the seat she sat and broke the thorn to get a better
hold to stick it in the face of winter's thorn,
bleak wind, and cutting frost, aghast upon the frozen pain.
The wind doth drive upon fast night, fast moon,
stuck fast in ice today.
English songs are pretty little songs
with the right, bright tune which follow it.
The book in his hand had a slight weight,
but the heat of the hand is pressed against it.
Holding it was the bother of it.
He had no idea as to which street would most quickly get
him there.
He wandered, a little drunk still,
hence walking head forward steadily.
People he's supposed to be looking at him or after,
but he could not change his eyes.
They went forward as his feet.
He listened slowly, closely to all
that she played him on the phonograph.
He had burnt out the fuses on two floors of the building
in which they lived, fixing it better,
more volume, more sound to it.
The bump and grind of Calypso, Charlie Parker.
Listened to it.
The song is, "Oh, where do the birds go?
You don't see them anymore now."
"No.
But you can't hear it enough so sweetly, so lightly hear it.
Listen closely then pick up the instrument
and play it, blow this way across,
making the sound lift out of the long wood.
Hold it firmly but do not over press.
A sound as in woods hollow from furtive shadow and water
the reeds and willows of the wood.
Not to be learned in an instant.
Listen in the game.
Listen.
We sang with a sharp, [INAUDIBLE]
shut the door behind you."
She was always not shutting the bathroom door.
In a maze of people streets then brought
to doors one after another of them of parks
like deserted, contaminated areas,
as if cut out of the activity, as if to be rebuilt as parks
one day-- woods, hollows, water.
A pipe dripped water into a stone basin.
He wet his hands and then wiped them on his pants.
He sat down to think of his direction.
"Not ever again," she said.
"No, but one last time, say."
This was outside the call of duty.
One last look, book like not forever, but one last time.
"Hey, it's you.
My God, it's you.
I never expected to find you here like this."
"Oh, say, what a happy day.
You came my way.
And that was a song.
Sing it."
He got up, no longer knowing where he was.
He asked the men passing where it was and got a vague answer.
The drunk with the book.
"Look, the drunk's got a book, a new book."
They wouldn't answer him but went past quickly,
smiling, frowning.
Perhaps he would try to sell the book to them.
He wasn't that drunk.
He was heartbroken.
He was hot, tired with walking, wanted to drink
beer, wanted friends, a home, wife, and friends and beer.
He sang a song for that sound.
He kept on walking, but it wasn't fair anymore.
"You're not listening."
"Yes," but he couldn't get the words.
"Like this, and one and two, like this, and there
you hear it now.
And one and two."
The boy stood in the burning bush, his hair was all on fire.
He thought that he would burn to death and very soon expire.
Yes, but not like this.
Song it is, wrong it is.
He kept walking because the plan had been made no longer to be
thought of as anything else--
get the book to her, get the goddamn book to her,
show her what you can do, the book with the songs.
Thank you very much.
I [INAUDIBLE]
[CLAPPING]
That's all.
If any of you are interested in talking
with Mr. Creeley for a few minutes,
he'll be around for 15, 20 minutes.
So come on right up.