Well, you've suffered enough.
I'll close with one last shorter song, also
on a theological theme.
This was called Song to the Tune of Somebody Stole My Gal.
You know that old Dixieland two beat, jazz tune?
Anybody here happens to care for old, moldy fig jazz?
Why, you probably know it.
Somebody Stole my Gal, old old jazz outfits still play it.
I thought of this tune when I was
talking with a poet friend, WD Snodgrass, who I guess
was here once upon a time.
And Snodgrass was teaching in Detroit at the time.
And he said that for some reason,
a lot of his students in college were coming to him
and complaining that they were taking science
courses for the first time, which they found in conflict
with their religious training.
I don't know just what the matter was.
Maybe they were from fundamentalist backgrounds
or I don't know--
I don't know what.
Somebody was teaching them Darwin, but some of them
were greatly pained and disturbed.
And many of them kept coming to Snodgrass
and he felt sorry for what these people were going through.
He didn't know what to tell them.
And finally, he started feeling sorry for himself and said,
I'm fed up with all these people who say, boohoo,
somebody stole my myths.
He was paraphrasing them.
But this line, somebody stole my myths, rattled around
in my head.
And finally, I realized that it ought
to go to the tune of Somebody Stole My Gal like this.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Somebody stole my myths.
Stole all their gists and piths.
Somebody pinched my Juno and Pan.
Crooked Dionysus and caused my spiritual crisis.
Some no good, no account made my centaur dismount.
Somebody in a laboratory coat with test tube
in hand mixed nitrogen with glycerin, and poof
went my promised land.
Oh, hear me crying.
Don't much like forever dying.
Somebody stole my myths.
Some no good, no account made my centaur dismount.
Somebody in a laboratory coat with test tube in hand
mixed that nitrogen together with that glycerin,
and poof there went my promised land.
Oh, hear me crying.
Don't much like forever dying.
Somebody stole my myths.