When you're in the Little Land. . .

 

When you're in the Little Land
You watch the wee folk play,
You see them through a game or two,
You come out old and gray.

When you're in the Little Land
They fill your hands with gold,
You think you stay for just a day,
You come out bent and old.



Dead leaves in your pockets
O my enchanted, have a care
Run, run from the little folk
Or you’ll have dead leaves in your pockets
And snowflakes in your hair



Lights shine in the Little Land
From diamonds on the wall,
But when you're back on the brown hill side
It's cold pebbles after all.



Music in the little land
Makes the heart rejoice.
It charms your ear so you can not hear
The sound of your true love’s voice

Dead leaves in your pockets
O my enchanted, have a care
Run, run from the little folk
Or you’ll have dead leaves in your pockets
And snowflakes in your hair



When you’re in the Little Land
You watch the wee folk play,
You see them through a game or two,
You come out old and gray.

Dead leaves in your pockets
O my enchanted, have a care
Run, run from the little folk
Or you’ll have dead leaves in your pockets
And snowflakes in your hair



Why did this leap into my head today, and where did it come from? Until this morning, damned if I knew. I remember my brother singing it in the '60s when he came home from university. Everyone was singing and playing the guitar and going to hootenannys, whatever they were, and most of us sucked our songs off record albums, often with wrong words and crazy chords.

It took me quite a while to find any semblance of this song, except for a very Irish version of it on YouTube. His didn't much resemble mine. It spoke of leprechauns, which gave me a clue as to what the song was about. But my version was one of those cobbled-together-from-memory things. I was only 9 or 10 years old and impressionable. I had NO IDEA what this song meant or even where it came from: I remember finding it weird and disturbing, which it still is.



So today, thanks to the good graces of YouTube, I more or less hunted it down, but it wasn't easy. This was originally written by Malvina Reynolds, an eccentric folk genius who wrote Little Boxes (on the hillside) and What Have they Done to the Rain? This was one of her more obscure numbers and sounds like it's based on folk poetry. One false lead took me to a poem called The Little Land by Robert Louis Stevenson (ph?), but it was one of those "How Would you Like to Go Up in a Swing" kind-of things, echoes of childhood, etc. Not threatening enough.

Somewhere I found a reference to the Limelighters, a folk group we listened to a lot back then. It featured Glen Yarbrough (borough? Who has time to check?), a tenor with a voice that would cut through barbed wire. I remember quite a few of their songs, but not this one.



So it was still pretty obscure when I finally tracked down the available fragments and pieced them together with my bits of memory: hey, folk singers do that all the time. (I left out one line: someone's version said "Deadly in your pocket," which is completely nonsensical. 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy.) But somewhere else, someone made a comment that actually made sense: Reynolds had a sense of social satire which could be quite biting (see Little Boxes). Perhaps the song was about another kind of "enchantment", not by leprechauns, faeries or other "little folk", but by the seductiveness of riches and fame.

It actually works. First you're just looking in from the outside, watching all these charming people at play, and it looks harmless enough, so you stay around for "a game or two". But then, bizarrely, you wake up and realize that decades have passed in a flash. The gold pouring through your hands eventually runs out and disappears. As in those alien encounters where people mysteriously lose time, the lurch ahead into old age is frightening: suddenly you're a has-been who never was.



The dead leaves in your pockets that I took so literally as a child could be the deadened browned scorched currency of false fame, crumbling away into nothing. And I don't need to explain those snowflakes. Bright lights, white hair, cold stones. To enchant, literally, means to gain magical power over someone by chanting, usually in song. Soon the sound of enchantment becomes so strong that we can no longer make out the voice of the one we truly love, the only one whose love is not based on greed.

It's a kind of evil reverse fairy-tale where the victim quickly shrivels under forces he or she can't comprehend. So much for cute little leprechauns, Lucky Charms and Kiss Me, I'm Irish.

POST-MORTEM. I will confess that this is a rerun, originally posted in 2012. Six bloody years is long enough, and hey, if *I* don't remember it, no one else will! I was certain I'd be able to find ample imformation after all that time had passed - it always happens on the internet. What shocked me was that nothing had changed - in fact, it was even harder to find anything at all about this song. There was a weird pdf of Reynolds' song lyrics that looked like it was typewritten on an old Olivetti portable from 1959, but I couldn't do anything with it. All sung versions have disappeared. The Limelighters DID record it, and I was allowed to listen to 30 seconds of it, enough to realize my memory had been close to correct. Malvina included a few lines in the original which specified the "wee folk" were, in fact, leprechauns. Nearly every culture has a myth about tiny people running around in the woods, doing demonic mischief and scaring people half to death. Leprechaun is a horrible word when you look at it. Scares the living shit out of me. No wee folk for me! Go away from my door.

POST-POST DISCOVERY. All right. I have it! I have that lyric sheet from the Olivetti. Here is the relevant lyric:

As you can see, this is pretty close to the version at the beginning of this post, without those few lines about the leprechauns. The possible meaning of the lyric (being bedazzled by wealth and fame, while at the same time seduced and sucked dry) is made more clear by the line, "They'll dazzle you and promise you, and lead you by the hand". It couldn't be more clear, in fact. The Limelighters version leaves that verse out, so it starts in the middle, kind of. But we still get the message. 'Tis luck to catch a leprechaun. Except when it isn't.

POST-IT NOTE: This is a summer repeat, inspired by a comment I just had on the ORIGINAL post (from years ago! I just love it when I get those.) I hadn't thought about it in years!

Here is our conversation:

Anonymous July 29, 2022 at 5:35 PM

There's more now, and based on the information you've given, I've tracked down a Malvina Reynolds recording on YouTube. Also a short version by a Raymond Crooke. Also the Limelighters version, which is least like what I heard in the 60's. Thanks for the leads!

Margaret Gunning July 30, 2022 at 10:51 AM

I had almost forgotten about this! Yes, it amazes me how, if you check back in a few years, suddenly there's all sorts of videos pertaining to the subject at hand. YT grows exponentially by the year. Thank you for your comment!

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

💛FLUFFY LITTLE DUMPLINGS! My best duckling video EVER

Haven't seen ANY birds for ever so long. The back yard is deserted! I've complained about this before, so I'll shut up now, but I honestly do not know what is going on, because everywhere we go now is virtually deserted. The neighbors across the back fence folded their tents in the night and disappeared in the weirdest "move" I ever saw. One day they were there, shouting and smoking pot with the dog yapping and strangling, and now the place looks scoured and abandoned. This seems to indicate sketchiness, because moving typically involves lots of hubbub and yells and boxes and vans and general mayhem, and there was NONE of that, not even by professional movers. What breaks my heart is that their two cats are gone, too - daily visitors to our yard, a sweet ginger and a handsome tuxedo. Both gone, along with all the birds. But here I have a record of just a few ducklings, the only ones I saw this year. What is going on?

😳SAY "AHHHHH!" CREEPY 1950s educational film😳

Creepy as fu*k! 

The Troll Doll Channel: GRUMPY CHORUS SINGS!

Lord, can these grumpy trolls SING!

💗The Troll Doll Channel: TROLL VILLAGE!💜

And this isn't all of them. Not by a long shot! These are just the trolls which have invaded my "workspace" (such as it is! Who wants to work anyway?)

🧡SWEET MAMA SQUIRREL (and - drama in the back yard!)

Squirrels are about all we get, these days. It's very depressing, and I don't know why it's happening. Everywhere we go, the bird count is nearly zero, at a time when the waters should be teeming with different species. The Blakeburn Lagoon is practically empty, when we used to see shovellers, ring-necks, wigeons, SWANS. . .and even a sandhill crane and an OTTER, to name only a few (red-tailed hawk?). Why have the birds abandoned so many places? Why is it happening everywhere? Only Burnaby Lake still has birds, but mostly geese, a few mallards, and hungry blackbirds. My darker senses tell me that Something is coming, maybe an earthquake, or something even worse, because birds have been known to have an acute spidey-sense for these things. I want them back! Birds are a huge part of my mental health, and helped me get through the worst of the pandemic - although they were already thinning out two years ago. With all the food I put out, I should be attracting them like a magnet, but all we see these days is fat squirrels and the odd finch at the window feeder. Will they EVER come back? Where are they? Why are they doing this?

BIGFOOT SAMBA!

STOP THE CLOCK! (short fiction)

Stop the clock (short fiction)



“Marcie! Hey it’s good to see you!”

“Hi, Julie.”

Julie looked her up and down. Up and down, then smiled brightly, her eyes glistening like wet caramels. Then came the single syllable.

“Wow.”

It wasn’t a “wow” like “wow, is that your new car?”. It was a “wow” like, “What happened to your new car?” It had a tiny backlilt, an inflection that was just a little bit “off”.

Marcie knew it wasn’t a good “wow”. It was almost a disappointed “wow”, but strained through a sort of Facebook screen so she could never be pinned down or held responsible.



“Wow yourself.”

“Yeah.!” The “yeah” started off as a high squeal, then sailed down to a whisper.

Julie looked away for just a second with a sort of reflexive hair-flip, like something you’d do in junior high. Marcie half-expected her to start chewing on the end of her braid. Then she brighted herself again.

“So what are you, y’knowwww – “

“Oh, same old thing.”

“Did you ever get – “

“No.”

“So are you self-publishing now? Whatever happened to that novel? You know, the one about the cruise ship and the - ”

“That was quite a while ago.”

“I can see that.” (See what? “That”.)

She hair-flipped again. “So what do you do now exactly, you know? I mean.”

“The same thing you do, Julie.”

“Oh, of course!” She kept looking Marcie up and down, her eyes flipping from head to mid-thigh, though pretending she wasn’t doing it.



“You know, it’s been an awfully long time since we’ve seen each other, Julie.”

“Tell me about it!”, with a well-practiced “oh, yeah!” eye-roll.

It was then that she noticed something funny about Julie. Or at least, she thought it was funny. She had a sort of glaze over her, like something you’d pour over cinnamon buns, or maybe a shell of amber. Glossy. Her smile was glossy too.

Had she done something to herself?

Marcie believed that, as you aged, your face decided to go one way or the other. It either went Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock. William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy looked almost the same in the ‘60s, well, at least both of them had normal faces, and now Shatner was round as a pumpkin and Nimoy looked like a burnt-out old matchstick.

Skinny faces got fat, fat faces got skinny. Gaunt-looking people rounded out and softened, as if their inner selves were working their way out. The healthy-looking ones housing gaunt souls ultimately lost the battle of looking like someone else.

But there was a third possibility, and that was to stop. Stop time, stop the clock ticking. Marcie always thought there was another word for that: “death”, but apparently not, because everywhere she looked these days, she saw people who had decided to stop the clock

Except that there was a cost.



As Julie pretended not to look at Marcie’s burgeoning weight, the little dewlappy thing that hung below her rounded chin, the lizard skin on her arms, Marcie pretended not to look at Julie’s House of Wax immobility, the shellacked quality which was now considered highly desirable, even as she heard the creepy murmur of Vincent Price in the background.

Some even turned the clock back. Ageing backwards, which was really some trick. If they kept on going, they’d be fetal in a few years, or disappearing altogether, their molecules just coming apart: poof!

“So, I guess you have a pretty big one coming up pretty soon.”

“A pretty big one?” For some insane reason Marcie thought “bowel movement”.

“Birthday!” She almost sang it, lilting high on the first syllable.

“Oh, Julie, how did you ever remember that?”

“I did your horoscope, silly, don’t you remember? Look at that.” She plucked a hair off the shoulder of Marcie’s blouse and looked at it.

“It’s a hair.”

“Yes, I know, but it’s - “

“Didn’t your hair used to be - wait, now what color was it, I mean before?”

“Before what?” Julie was starting to sound defensive. She could dish it out, but she definitely couldn’t take it.

“Before the Jurassic Period,” Marcie wanted to say, but she didn’t. All the nasty things she left unsaid were going to kill her, one of these days, like a great landslide falling down on her.



“You’re still slim,” she said instead. “How do you do it?”

“Oh! I cleanse. Every month. High colonics, they’re awesome! You just purge away all that gunk in your system. All those toxins.”

“I thought you were vegan.”

“Oh, but vegetables have chemicals on them no matter what, because of the water supply.”

“I still eat cows.” She was becoming extremely depressed. How to get rid of her?

“You’re going to kill yourself, Marcie,” Julie murmured, pulling out and using the appropriate facial expression before tucking it away again.

(“Yes, if this conversation goes on any longer.” Another rock in the landslide.)

“My grandmother ate cows.”

“But they were different cows.”

Marcie burst out laughing. She couldn’t keep the laugh to herself.

“I should say they were.”

“No, you don’t understand, they weren’t GMO cows.” Marcie thought this was something about General Motors or something. Her lack of interest finally must have registered on Julie.



“Listen, sweetie, I have to go now, but I want to give you something" (rummaging in her voluminous shoulder-bag) “- or actually, a few things, they’re freebies from the gym, you know? And the salon and stuff. Take them.” She thrust a wad of things in Marcie’s hands with a tight smile, turned around abruptly and gave a little Liza Minnelli backwards wave over her shoulder before flouncing away.

Marcie stood in the street shuffling through her treasures. A coupon for Turbo-Charge Fat Blaster Weight Loss Supplement, $2.00 off the first 60 capsules. An ad for a 60-ounce mega-capacity twenty-speed macerating Power-Juicer, 90-day trial free of charge! “Look 20 years younger in 20 minutes with Botuline, available NOW from your dentist!” A little packet of shampoo from a trendy salon, something called Blow your Head Off!, to mask “the grey” (grey sounding as ominous as some creepy space alien, and as undesirable). An ad for dental veneers with a woman smiling like a piano, showing every blinding-white tooth in her head.

God, she must think I’m a disgusting mess.

Just plaster things on the outside, and run-run-run. It’ll catch up with you one day. Sooner or later all your molecules will come apart, never to be replaced. When your molecules do come apart, there will literally be nothing left. Is that why you draw back so hard, by trying to minus-out the years you’ve slogged on this earth? Keep hitting the reset button. But what about your mind? Can you erase that too? I suppose you can. It’s done in a slightly different way.



They were friends then, quite good friends, had many excited conversations about this and that, though they often had a barbed quality to them, a putting-down-with-eyeroll. It was necessarily for them to have a mutual enemy or threat in order to really get along. Julie seemed like a super-coper, always on top of every situation, so Marcie was stunned when she suddenly, floridly fell apart. She had always been a little frantic, but this was something else, as if the tiny dancing ballerina on top of the music box had gradually accelerated until it was spinning a million miles an hour. This wasn’t any penny-ante breakdown, it was wholesale craziness, hallucinations, delusions, the works.

That sounds awful, Marcie thought, just heartless! It was pain and suffering, for sure, but it was funny how everyone around Julie seemed to suffer more than she did. And it was her family who decided she needed “shock”, something her sardonic old great-uncle called “Edison’s medicine”.

The shock re-set her for sure, but things weren’t the same after that. It was as if some mute but powerful presence deep in her psyche said: not this way; THAT way, and gave her a huge shove in the direction of artificiality. This was the way to make it. This was survival, solace, and something she could be really good at. As the years passed, her new strategy dovetailed beautifully with what the culture expected of her: the new Julie was popular at last, and because of that, Marcie just faded into the background. Not that Marcie went backwards: Julie just turned and walked away.



Now, it was: Wow. Look at you. All right. I’ve made decisions, more compromises than I ever thought I would have to. I am no prize. For this reason, I have one less friend in the world, though I suspect I lost her a long time ago. Life is inherently lonely, isn’t it? Aren’t the sweet fleeting times the very worst, because of how they always go away?

And why is it that when things are good, I mean, really good – as sweet as they can possibly be - we are always the last ones to know? Better not to recognize such beauty, even in ourselves, lest we cry out to a heedless universe in last-ditch desperation and despair: "Freeze!"

😱SCREAMING COWBOY!🤠

This just jumped out at me from nowhere! I saw it on someone else's channel, a very small channel which normally garners tens of views, if that - and this one got something like FOUR MILLION. It happens sometimes, and no one can figure it out. The same thing is happening with one of mine, the dumbest thing I ever threw together. This, though - it's excruciatingly good, and I don't know why I didn't know about it before. I stole it, actually, and had to take a copyright claim to do so (and the only reason I did not get a copyright STRIKE is that so many other people had already stolen it). I think it is from a music video by some unknown, surreal cowboy act. Lefty Frizzell on acid or something. 

Old Brown Ads (with old brown attitudes)

 

This one simply terrifies me! It sounds like instructions to drown yourself: "To clean the nose: Put two or three drops of Sylpho-Nathal in a glass of warm water.  Pour a little in the palm of your hand and SNUFF IT UP THE NOSE" (emphasis mine). But this madness makes a bit more sense when you read the first paragraph: "Everybody - old and young - should do this. For the mucus membrane of the nose and throat of healthy persons may become contaminated with the infantile paralysis virus. Without falling ill themselves, they may infect others, chiefly children." The infantile paralysis is, of course, polio, and I doubt if snuffing medicated water up your nose would prevent it. But there are eerie echoes here of the weird and desperate things people did to try to cure or prevent COVID. This isn't quite as bad as drinking bleach, but I don't see how it could help, and Sylpho-Nathal is probably made of the same stuff as horse liniment.

"Grippe" is one of those old words, like quinsy or lumbago, that you just don't hear any more. I was going to do a whole post on this, but couldn't find enough words. Heebie-jeebies? (That was, I think, a psychiatric term.) These mysterious tablets are "simply remedies which fight off the poisons in your system, and enable you better to overcome the cold." The implication is that somehow this cold or grippe might morph into influenza, one of the most dreaded diseases of the early 20th century. I doubt if Cold & Grippe Tablets made much difference. And as usual, I wonder: what the hell was IN these things? This was in the days before consumer transparency.

I DO remember pepsin-flavored gum and Life Savers. I don't know if they're made any more, but I hope not, because just the name makes me quail. Pepsin, I later found out, is a digestive enzyme, something probably taken out of a cow's stomach. This stuff has the power to not only get rid of this geezer's tummy-ache, it "purifies breath and whitens teeth" in the bargain! Clean, pure, healthful, and full of sugar and cow bile/vomit.

Though it's a little hard to make out the text of this VERY brown old ad, I think I get the gist of it: FASTABS is a miracle "vegetable substance" that you take before meals, along with a LOT of water. The ingredient is methylcellulose, an indigestible material that soaks up water like a sponge, creating a large squishy mass which supposedly takes up all the room in your tummy so you won't want to eat. Probably you COULDN'T eat with that heaving slime in your gut. 

Oh my goodness - WHAT is "smoker's fag"? I thought a fag WAS a cigarette, at least in olden times in Britain. But you can also be "fagged out", a quaint expression meaning that you're tired. But this is just so bizarre! The ad is for Phillips' Milk of Magnesia, a digestive remedy also used to relieve constipation. This poor old bugger is sitting there with a "fag" dangling out of his mouth, and he'd be green if he weren't so brown. The tobacco has made him so sick he wants to vomit. But ONE SIMPLE THING can "Minimize the After-Effects of Tobacco to a Remarkable Degree"! Nowhere is it stated that you should just stop smoking, idjit, and save your lungs as well as your precious tummy. 

Now we get to the issue of "starved blood" (in later decades known as "tired blood"). Delicate girls and women "need that blood-strength which comes from medicinal nourishment. No drugs can make blood." There is something faintly Dracula-like about all this - "blood-food", are you KIDDING me? But if you are frail, languid, delicate or nervous, then you belong in a vampire movie lying back on a chaise longue waiting for Bela Lugosi to bite your neck.

There is something just so esthetically pleasing about this ad for a punching bag, with its elegant illustration of a man wearing a long, ornate brocade skirt tied with a tasselled sash. No one explains why he's in drag, or why there is a CHILDREN'S SIZE punching bag for a couple dollars less. I have never heard of a child using a punching bag, and it is still more strange to see a man from the early 1900s wearing one of his wife's ballgowns to work out. Or maybe it's the dining room curtains?

Aha! CATARRH! This was one of the obsolete diseases I was trying to remember. Just the name is disgusting and phlegmy. So why has this dire condition fallen out of fashion? Do people not GET catarrh any more, has it just changed into a runny nose which you should shut up about, and why on earth would a runny nose spell such doom for people, particularly in the summer? The guy wearing the graduation cap seems to know all about this, though he would never answer the most fundamental question: what the hell is IN this stuff? 

Again with the stomach remedies! This woman doesn't need Alka-Seltzer, she needs a good night's sleep, and more help with the children on a daily basis. If you have that headachy, tired-all-over feeling, your body is telling you to get the hell to BED and get some rest. But no, it's plop-plop, fizz-fizz, oh what a relief it is. Overwhelmed with the constant stress and isolation of child care? There's a pill for that. 

Elephant Eternity and other poems

Elephant Eternity

Elephants walking under juicy-leaf trees
Walking with their children under juicy-leaf trees
Elephants elephants walking like time

Elephants bathing in the foam-floody river
Fountaining their children in the mothery river
Elephants elephants bathing like happiness

Strong and gentle elephants
Standing on the earth
Strong and gentle elephants
Like peace

Time is walking under elephant trees
Happiness is bathing in the elephant river
Strong gentle peace is shining
All over the elephant earth

Adrian Mitchell

Ghost Elephants

In the elephant field
tall green ghost elephants
with your cargo of summer leaves

at night I heard you breathing at the window

Don't you ever think I'm not crying
since you're away from me
Don't ever think I went free

At first the goodbye had a lilt to it—
maybe just a couple of months—
but it was a beheading.

Ghost elephant,

reach down,

cross me over

Jean Valentine



The Elephant is slow to mate

The elephant, the huge old beast,
is slow to mate;
he finds a female, they show no haste
they wait

for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts
slowly, slowly to rouse
as they loiter along the river-beds
and drink and browse

and dash in panic through the brake
of forest with the herd,
and sleep in massive silence, and wake
together, without a word.

So slowly the great hot elephant hearts
grow full of desire,
and the great beasts mate in secret at last,
hiding their fire.

Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts
so they know at last
how to wait for the loneliest of feasts
for the full repast.

They do not snatch, they do not tear;
their massive blood
moves as the moon-tides, near, more near
till they touch in flood.

D. H. Lawrence

The Elephant Song

Tong, tong, tong-a-tong, a-tong!
That is thc rhythm of the elephant song,
As the big grey elephants shuffle along.

To the sing, song, singing of the old brass bell,
To the shrill, harsh stridence of the mahoot's yell,
To the shuff-shuff-shuffle of the great round feet,
The elephants are swinging down the village street.

A priest peers out from his while-washed cell,
As he hears the ringing of the elephant bell.
A wild-eyed fakir flings a mumbled curse,
A baby peers from the arms of its nurse,

A cobra dances to a charmer's tune,
The incense wavers in the shrine of the moon,
The street dogs scamper, the children scurry,
A woman hum-hums as she fixes curry,

While the bells keep ringing, like a. distant gong,
Tong, tong, tong-a-tong. a-tong,
The swing-along rhythm of the elephant song.

Anonymous

As I Went Out One Morning (after W. H. Auden)

As I went out one morning






As I went out one morning
Walking the primal road
My shoulders were bent over
With an invisible load.

And down by the creek where the salmon
Sing all day in the spring
I heard a man with holes in his clothes
Say, “Love has no ending.”

I wondered at his heresy
He wasn’t supposed to speak
Of things he did not understand
And shouldn’t even seek.



“I love you, Lord, I love you,”
the ragged man proclaimed,
although his face was badly scarred
and his body bent and maimed.

The man was clearly crazy
For as he spoke his rhyme,
The salmon danced in the shallow stream
In fish-determined time.

I didn’t try to love him
But I loved him just the same
For he broke the diver’s quivering bow
And called his God by name.



“Oh tell me, man, oh tell me,”
I cried in my anguished state,
“What is the secret of the world?
Where is the end of hate?”

And all at once his face had changed
To an evil, ugly mask
His body had become the hate
About which I had asked.



“How stamp this mask into the mud,
How keep despair at bay?”
“You can’t,” he told me, grinning,
“But my God can point the way.”

“How dare you speak of God, you wretch,
When God’s abandoned you?
How dare you use the Holy Name?
He doesn’t want you to!





Your life’s just spent surviving
With the sidewalk as your bed
And taking poisons in your veins
And scrambling to be fed.”

The man just stood in leaves and mulch
While the salmon sang and spawned:
“Just see the other side of me
And tell me I am wrong.”

Another face appeared just then
A face all beaming bright
Its eyes were streaming like the sun
With pure mysterious light



“You blinded fool, you stand before
A drop of mist made rain
An eye that Paradise looks through
That holds both joy and pain.”

“I cannot understand you, for
You play such games with me!
How can you masquerade as God
And tell me how to see?”



“No one knows how Life began,
From Nothing came our birth.
A stir of seething molecules
Sparked all the life on earth.”

“Don’t tell me, wretch, you are the one
Who made this world come true!
Imposter, get out of my road,
I cannot look at you.”



“Just so,” the man said, streaming light,
“For no one knows the why.
But you will be forever changed
By looking through my eye.”

Margaret Gunning

My favorite poem

This poem has been my touchstone since I first heard Mr. Griffith read it in Grade 11 English class. I could never share with anyone how much it meant to me. I still find layers of meaning in it, and make new discoveries: the "appalling snow" he writes about, which at first seems nonsensical, casts a "pall" on the landscape, even if it is white rather than black. And so much more! This is a dream poem, the kind of work that can make a poet hang up his pencil because his work is now completed. I was surprised this video got any views at all - I didn't expect any - but since it did fairly well (for a poetry reading), I may do more. I like the format of sitting up in bed, late at night, with a book and a lamp and my cat loafing beside me. I have to keep my voice down, which I believe aids the process. I loathe "actorish" readings of things, as it ruins the atmosphere of most poems, or imposes the reader's ego on it. This poem practically reads itself. "And the deep river ran on."

Little Lolita (a short work of fiction)

It’s not that she wasn’t grateful. When you don’t get to go anywhere on a Saturday night because everyone thinks you’re a loser and full of shit, you should be grateful for any kind of social contact at all.

Or so her siblings thought. Her sister Noreen was thirteen years older than she was, and obviously Mum and Dad were going to trust her with her little sister's wellbeing. Besides, it was good for her to “get out”, much better than hiding in her room crying like she always did.

Her older brother Don had lots of friends too, and their wives came along, but that didn’t stop the “goings-on” that were considered to be all part of the fun. She noticed the minute she stepped into the babble and funk of these parties that she was the mascot, younger than anyone else by ten years or more. Was she game? A target? Who knew, but what she did know was that she was supposed to be grateful.



There was an obnoxious creep called Shivas, but after a while she figured out that it wasn’t his real name, that it came from his habit of making a certain drink called a Shivas Special. Chivas Regal and one ice cube. Another was Tang crystals dissolved in vodka.

They were all quite interested in seeing how the mascot would react to having her glass filled and refilled. After all, she was allowed wine at home. Lots of it. Her parents didn’t frown on her drinking and even seemed to think it was “good for her”. Her brother and sister waved the banner of booze at every opportunity, insisting it was an unalloyed good, even when they woke the next day vomiting and ashen.



The party deteriorated over time, got louder, with people bumping together and the smell of pot wafting under door-cracks. Once she felt a hand, someone’s hand, didn’t know whose. Then her brother’s best friend started smiling at her. She looked the other way. Like the Ugly Duckling, she just didn’t believe it at first.

But then he sort of beckoned with his eyes. Come upstairs with me. Upstairs?? His wife was over in the corner flirting with her brother like they always did. Did she dare to do this, could she sneak up with him and –

This is how it always happened.



It happened because her brother’s friend was a really good kisser. He knew the spots to touch. Her body responded like flame, though she felt overpowering shame at her reaction. She knew she wasn’t supposed to feel this way, to feel anything at all. But she also knew she had caused this, somehow. He managed to convey without words that he had always found her attractive and not mousy or fat.

All she knew about sex she had learned from books, the books stashed in her father’s bureau drawer under his underwear and pajamas. When her parents were away at choir practice, she took them out. They were very clinical and did not deal with passion or pleasure, as if those sensations did not belong in the field of sex.

But she knew about erections, because he was pressing his against her body with force. Her heart beginning to race, she wondered if she would be raped. She wondered if she should fight back, break away. But the truth is, she loved the attention.



“Hey, you two!” a voice came up the stairs. “Get down here, will you? Quit messing around.” It was a woman’s voice, and at first she wondered if it was the man’s wife. When she came downstairs, stumbling a little, she saw it was her brother’s girl friend, her makeup badly askew. The woman grabbed her around the waist and squeezed: “Little Lolita,” she crooned. “Little sexpot.”

The booze continued to flow. Her sister held court in an astonishing display of vanity and narcissism, “looking after” her little sister by ignoring her and handing her over to the good graces of Shivas and his endless noxious drinks. People made less and less sense. She felt more hands on her and didn’t know who they were.



She remembered trying to tell her sister about what was happening to her at these parties, what was being done to her. Done to her by married men with their wives in the next room (or even the same room). Her older sister rolled her eyes a bit and said, “I don’t know why you’re so upset! You don’t seem to have any friends your own age. This way you can have a social outlet with the grownups.”

When she told her a little bit about the seductions, she shook her head.

“Are they having sex with you?” For one second, concern seemed to flicker in her eyes.

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. You’re exaggerating. I really don’t think there’s anything wrong with a little smooch and a snuggle. Look, we’re trying to include you and I really think you should be more grateful.”

Much later, she read about something called Walpurgis Night, a sort of witch’s Sabbath with hideous swarms of demonic figures that swept through communities leaving blackened wreckage in their wake. But this was supposed to be an advantage for her, a social outlet!
How many 14-year-olds wouldn’t give their right arm to be included in a group of adults with full-blown adult privileges?



She would go home after midnight, stagger into the bathroom and throw up all the Chivas Regal. The next morning, pale as a spook, she would throw up again, with her mother hearing her but saying nothing.

Her mother knew. She knew everything. Wanted to be rid of this social liability, to hand her over. Keep her happy. Later that day the family received a bouquet. She knew it was from her brother’s friend, the one who had pinned and groped her. It couldn’t be anyone else.

"Had a great time last night," the sloppily-written tag read. "See you next week."

It was not signed. Incredibly, her parents did not ask who had sent it, but put the pink roses in a vase on the table.

Twenty years later, the family was absolutely horrified to learn that Little Sister had joined AA. It was a total disgrace to the family, who had never had problems like that and never would. It was obviously an act of hostility on her part. They could never understand why she wasn't more grateful for all they had done for her. When she began to see a therapist, it was even worse, for that implied that the family was crazy. Then they decided that SHE was the one who was crazy, and the matter was closed.



Post-script. Some years later my brother's friend, the one who liked to send me roses, lost his job and all his money and (finally) his wife, and shot himself in the head. I suppose these things never end well. For me, they never end at all.

BLOGGER'S NOTE. This is not the first, nor probably even the second time I have posted this. Calling it fiction is - fiction, as most of it happened to me, just the way it was set down here. I even tried to send a link to my brother through Facebook - but he's not really on Facebook, and I took the link off anyway. The only brother who loved me and understood me died on the streets of Toronto in 1980. No one left in my family would ever get this, or even believe half of it, but I was there. I think posting the Auden poem and all it stirred up in me caused me to dredge this up again. I have healed, and have a good life now, and my family is more wonderful than I can say. So: I WON, I scored a clear victory, and will never be pulled down by this shit, ever again. So it doesn't matter whether my fucking brother ever sees it. Which he won't, as he'd think it was all lies anyway.

W. H. Auden's homoerotic masterpiece

THE PLATONIC BLOW – W. H. AUDEN

It was a spring day, a day for a lay, when the air
Smelled like a locker-room, a day to blow or get blown;
Returning from lunch I turned my corner and there
On a near-by stoop I saw him standing alone.

I glanced as I advanced. The clean white T-shirt outlined
A forceful torso, the light-blue denims divulged
Much. I observed the snug curves where they hugged the behind,
I watched the crotch where the cloth intriguingly bulged.

Our eyes met. I felt sick. My knees turned weak.
I couldn’t move. I didn’t know what to say.
In a blur I heard words, myself like a stranger speak
“Will you come to my room?” Then a husky voice, “O.K.”

I produced some beer and we talked. Like a little boy
He told me his story. Present address: next door.
Half Polish, half Irish. The youngest. From Illinois.
Profession: mechanic. Name: Bud. Age: twenty-four.

He put down his glass and stretched his bare arms along
The back of my sofa. The afternoon sunlight struck
The blond hairs on the wrist near my head. His chin was strong.
His mouth sucky. I could hardly believe my luck.

And here he was sitting beside me, legs apart.
I could bear it no longer. I touched the inside of his thigh.
His reply was to move closer. I trembled, my heart
Thumped and jumped as my fingers went to his fly.

I opened a gap in the flap. I went in there.
I sought for a slit in the gripper shorts that had charge
Of the basket I asked for. I came to warm flesh, then to hair.
I went on. I found what I hoped. I groped. It was large.

He responded to my fondling in a charming, disarming way:
Without a word he unbuckled his belt while I felt.
And lolled back, stretching his legs. His pants fell away.
Carefully drawing it out, I beheld what I held.

The circumcised head was a work of mastercraft
With perfectly beveled rim of unusual weight
And the friendliest red. Even relaxed, the shaft
Was of noble dimensions with the wrinkles that indicate

Singular powers of extension. For a second or two,
It lay there inert, then suddenly stirred in my hand,
Then paused as if frightened or doubtful of what to do.
And then with a violent jerk began to expand.

By soundless bounds it extended and distended, by quick
Great leaps it rose, it flushed, it rushed to its full size.
Nearly nine inches long and three inches thick,
A royal column, ineffably solemn and wise.

I tested its length and strength with a manual squeeze.
I bunched my fingers and twirled them about the knob.
I stroked it from top to bottom. I got on my knees.
I lowered my head. I opened my mouth for the job.

But he pushed me gently away. He bent down. He unlaced
His shoes. He removed his socks. Stood up. Shed
His pants altogether. Muscles in arms and waist
Rippled as he whipped his T-shirt over his head.

I scanned his tan, enjoyed the contrast of brown
Trunk against white shorts taut around small
Hips. With a dig and a wriggle he peeled them down.
I tore off my clothes. He faced me, smiling. I saw all.

The gorgeous organ stood stiffly and straightly out
With a slight flare upwards. At each beat of his heart it threw
An odd little nod my way. From the slot of the spout
Exuded a drop of transparent viscous goo.

The lair of hair was fair, the grove of a young man,
A tangle of curls and whorls, luxuriant but couth.
Except for a spur of golden hairs that fan
To the neat navel, the rest of the belly was smooth.

Well hung, slung from the fork of the muscular legs,
The firm vase of his sperm, like a bulging pear,
Cradling its handsome glands, two herculean eggs,
Swung as he came towards me, shameless, bare.

We aligned mouths. We entwined. All act was clutch,
All fact contact, the attack and the interlock
Of tongues, the charms of arms. I shook at the touch
Of his fresh flesh, I rocked at the shock of his cock.

Straddling my legs a little I inserted his divine
Person between and closed on it tight as I could.
The upright warmth of his belly lay all along mine.
Nude, glued together for a minute, we stood.

I stroked the lobes of his ears, the back of his head
And the broad shoulders. I took bold hold of the compact
Globes of his bottom. We tottered. He fell on the bed.
Lips parted, eyes closed, he lay there, ripe for the act.

Mad to be had, to be felt and smelled. My lips
Explored the adorable masculine tits. My eyes
Assessed the chest. I caressed the athletic hips
And the slim limbs. I approved the grooves of the thighs.

I hugged, I snuggled into an armpit. I sniffed
The subtle whiff of its tuft. I lapped up the taste
Of its hot hollow. My fingers began to drift
On a trek of inspection, a leisurely tour of the waist.

Downward in narrowing circles they playfully strayed.
Encroached on his privates like poachers, approached the prick,
But teasingly swerved, retreated from meeting. It betrayed
Its pleading need by a pretty imploring kick.

“Shall I rim you?” I whispered. He shifted his limbs in assent.
Turned on his side and opened his legs, let me pass
To the dark parts behind. I kissed as I went
The great thick cord that ran back from his balls to his arse.

Prying the buttocks aside, I nosed my way in
Down the shaggy slopes. I came to the puckered goal.
It was quick to my licking. He pressed his crotch to my chin.
His thighs squirmed as my tongue wormed in his hole.

His sensations yearned for consummation. He untucked
His legs and lay panting, hot as a teen-age boy.
Naked, enlarged, charged, aching to get sucked,
Clawing the sheet, all his pores open to joy.

I inspected his erection. I surveyed his parts with a stare
From scrotum level. Sighting along the underside
Of his cock, I looked through the forest of pubic hair
To the range of the chest beyond rising lofty and wide.

I admired the texture, the delicate wrinkles and the neat
Sutures of the capacious bag. I adored the grace
Of the male genitalia. I raised the delicious meat
Up to my mouth, brought the face of its hard-on to my face.

Slipping my lips round the Byzantine dome of the head,
With the tip of my tongue I caressed the sensitive groove.
He thrilled to the trill. “That’s lovely!” he hoarsely said.
“Go on! Go on!” Very slowly I started to move.

Gently, intently, I slid to the massive base
Of his tower of power, paused there a moment down
In the warm moist thicket, then began to retrace
Inch by inch the smooth way to the throbbing crown.

Indwelling excitements swelled at delights to come
As I descended and ascended those thick distended walls.
I grasped his root between left forefinger and thumb
And with my right hand tickled his heavy voluminous balls.

I plunged with a rhythmical lunge steady and slow,
And at every stroke made a corkscrew roll with my tongue.
His soul reeled in the feeling. He whimpered “Oh!”
As I tongued and squeezed and rolled and tickled and swung.

Then I pressed on the spot where the groin is joined to the cock,
Slipped a finger into his arse and massaged him from inside.
The secret sluices of his juices began to unlock.
He melted into what he felt. “O Jesus!” he cried.

Waves of immeasurable pleasure mounted his member in quick
Spasms. I lay still in the notch of his crotch, inhaling his sweat.
His ring convulsed round my finger. Into me, rich and thick,
His hot spunk spouted in gouts, spurted in jet after jet.

SOOOOOO, do I have anything to say about this masterpiece of homoeroticism? For that is what it is. It is simply beautiful in its graceful, yet blatant sexuality. No doubt having to hide for most of his life, it must have been luxurious for Auden to write it. It sounds like a fantasy, of course - he meets a young, stunningly gorgeous, totally anonymous, totally available young man for a one-time "tryst" (for the feeling is, even though he lives next door, this will happen only once and never again).

I have a history with this poem, strangely enough. When I used to visit my sister in Toronto (and yes, there was a time I would be in the same room with her), I was only about 15, and everyone else was about 15 years older. There were magazines lying around - not exactly dirty, no pictures, but literary porn disguised as "erotica". I knew of Auden from English class, and my favorite poem remains As I Walked Out one Evening (which I made a YouTube video of - I'll post it soon). But this - ! This was not only beautifully-written, but frankly dirty, if dirty means so blatantly sexual that it makes your jaw drop (so to speak). It stayed in my head, my impressionable young 15-year-old head, and just as I was exposed to dirty literature, I was also plied with drink, made very drunk, treated like a drunk little mascot, and groped and grabbed at by my sister's many boy friends, most of them married men in their 30s. One of them, I found out later, shot himself in the head. And I was expected to be grateful - as if it was some sort of special privilege to have this golden opportunity of sampling adult delights. To be "included". My parents knew all about these visits, by the way, and the parties, and even - shockingly - attended many of them themselves, boozing, shouting, not seeing or wanting to see.

But the Auden. After all the pawing and groping, I wasn't exactly innocent, even if I seemed to have a target painted on me somewhere. I knew about stuff like this, though it would have been better for me if I didn't. But even so, I wasn't used to such raw sexuality expressed in such masterful terms, which is why bits of it DID stick: "That's lovely", for some reason, and "an odd little nod". 

Years stream by! And more, and more. But it was still a long time ago that I thought of it again and googled it, and found that there WAS a poem called The Platonic Blow which had ONCE been ascribed to Auden, but it was a vicious lie, unkind and unfair, and OF COURSE he didn't write it! Case closed. But the poem was the same poem, I knew it. I sent a copy to a novelist friend of mine, and he answered, "Wow."

More years! Years and years. Then once again I thought of it, and fished it up again, and THIS time, yes, what do you know, Auden DID write it and even published it, underground and under a different name. But he wanted it in print, and no wonder. It's just so Auden-ish: "Shall I rim you?" he asks, in his best drawing-room English, as if asking, "Cream or lemon?" To me he always looked like a dried-out, vastly wrinkly professorial type, but apparently he hung out with Christopher Isherwood and "Benji" Britten (a closet queen whom Auden helped open the door), and was quite a wild thing in his youth. It's not true that homosexuality was universally damned until about 1973. In Paris, in the 1920s, it was quite the thing, and you did not even need to be "gay" to sample it. It was just another sexual adventure, a way to colour outside the lines. A man could relax into his gayness there.

If I had put any whisper of this on YouTube, I'd be banned for life, and I'm still not sure the Blog Monster won't just come and shut me down for publishing "p*rn". Things are so bad on YouTube now that you can't say "d*mn" or "h*ll", and all swears are now bleeped. It's very depressing.

But I'll post this, and if anyone is offended you can stop reading at any time. It's nice to know this "BUT AUDEN DIDN'T WRITE IT" garbage has died out. I've seen discussions where people vehemently, even violently protested any suggestion that their literary heroes were gay, as if it is the worst slander one can sling at someone. Maybe to some, it still is. 

But Auden was gay, quite flamboyantly gay, and he loved young men, and I too feel a stir at this description, because it doesn't matter how old you are, or how married you are. Men smell good, their voices are wonderful, and those hands, those eyes. And other parts.