Lesser Ury: London in the Fog (London im Nebel 1926)
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
"Prufrock" also provided a line for this previous Sunday Service song. There are lots more in allusions to Eliot in popular music and, no doubt, they will provide future songs for the Sunday Service. For the moment, how's about we settle in and listen to the poet take a turn himself:
If you'd like your Eliot ready with animation rather than stagnant pictures, here you are:
Perhaps your version would have shoeboxes for hats ... I know mine does. Shoeboxes and mighty plosives and a, um, broader interpretation.
For those familiar with the group Deep Purple, their selection in the LitRock category might be a head scratcher: isn't this the head banging, hard rock, heavy metal band of "Smoke on the Water" and "Space Truckin'"? And right you would be, 70's classic rock mavens. However, Deep Purple started out a bit differently and this cut is probably the apex of that difference: a near 13 minute suite that combines rock, pop-rock, heavy classical, and, yeah, literary pretensions, the later being used in the strictly non-judgmental sense. This after all was the edge of experimentation; rock operas, suites, the cross-pollination of genres, album length songs etc. Here is their intro to the piece from the liner notes:
A sort of 3 part concert about the month of April. The first section is played by just Jon and Ritchie. Jon played piano and organ, and Ritchie played acoustic guitar (a rhythm pattern and a double tracked lead pattern) and electric guitar. The choir was added afterwards. The whole section used about 11 different tracks. Also Ian on timpani can be heard in the background. The second section is Jon's orchestral description of April. The instruments used were: two flutes, two oboes, cor anglais, two clarinets, two violins, viola and two cellos. The third section is a treatment of the chord sequence of the first section in a more "Purple" way. As a whole, we hope April hangs together as personal evocation of a beautiful, but sad (to us) month.
And the lyric (which, be forewarned, does not kick in until around the 8:45 or so mark):
April
April is a cruel time Even though the sun may shine And world looks in the shade as it slowly comes away Still falls the April rain And the valley's filled with pain And you can't tell me quite why As I look up to the grey sky Where it should be blue Grey sky where I should see you Ask why, why it should be so I'll cry, say that I don't know
Maybe once in a while I'll forget and I'll smile But then the feeling comes again of an April without end Of an April lonely as they come In the dark of my mind I can see all too fine But there is nothing to be done when I just can't feel the sun And the springtime's the season of the night
Grey sky where it should be blue Grey sky where I should see you Ask why, why it should be so I'll cry, say that I don't know I don't know
The literary allusion here is, of course, to Eliot's "The Waste Land" and its infamous opening line: "April is the cruelest month ..." It is amazing that this song has stayed with me for 40 years. The lyric itself is feather light, but the striving for something else in the rock medium is not and, I believe, they pulled it off in a way so many genre bending/blending experiments did not. The album from which this comes is the self-titled third album, "Deep Purple," the original cover of which was a detail from the Hieronymus Bosch painting "Garden of Earthly Delights," pictured above (It now inexplicably looks like this.) Bosch, you probably know, is responsible for the Lilliput logo at the top right of this page. Some of the rest of the album has some LitRock connections: "Why Didn't Rosemary? (Ever Take the Pill)" rather glibly alluding to the then culturally resonant Ira Levin book, Rosemary's Baby, and the successful Roman Polanski movie adaptation, and the cut "The Painter," referencing both art and writing.
And, because we are here, an odd bit of business: a mashup of T. S. Eliot reading the opening section of The Wasteland" (Burial of the Dead) with an excerpt from the biopic about Joy Division lead singer, Ian Curtis, entitled Control:
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This week's poem comes from issue #59, in August 1994, 5 other poems from which may be found in this post. This one is from the inimitable AlbertHuffstickler, on one of his favorite subjects: rain.
Grey Rain Day
Grey rain day in Austin, Texas. The soul slips in and out, never straying far as though fearing the rain might catch it. I dream over coffee, something in the back of my mind, some final perfect thought that eludes me finally, slipping away into the grey rain air.
Albert Huffstickler
And from that other master of the elements, Issa:
the winter rain dumps and dumps... Buddha in the field
Take a look at Allen Ginsberg's annotated copy of Eliot's The Waste Land.
Take a listen to two mp3's (at the bottom of the post): one of Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg performing "Vomit Blues" and Dylan and the Band performing "See You Later, Allen Ginsberg" from Sweetheart of the Radio.
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