singer, songwriter, rock 'n' roller
Let us go then you and I
When the evening streets are full of spies,
Provocateurs and counterspies,
Through the garden's forking paths;
Let us go through
Dark deceitful days
Of black and white cliches,
That lead you to a bitter revelation
Which the evidence all supports.
So let us go
And make our own report.
And the women restless
Where they lay,
In their dreams of Cassius Clay.
And the garbled voices we listen to,
And the muffled words we listen to,
As our companions and our friends,
Our families even in a way;
Arrange themselves in logic forced
And trace the river to its source,
A river in its serpent course
That vows to take you home.
From Allan Dulles and the OSS,
To napalm days to kevlar vests;
lan Fleming may your soul find rest
In all these repercussions.
In dreams of Kruschev and the Bay of Pigs
To nightmare skies black with MiGs,
They were dark days but I love dark days
But my love was complicated --
If you'd cracked the code
We might have celebrated.
And the women restless
Where they lay,
In their dreams of Cassius Clay.
There will be time to find the puzzle's missing pieces,
To compose and write a thesis;
And warn of national security breaches.
Time for Europe and the Wall
And a golden starlet to recall,
Stretched cold and waxen like a doll,
Before the cloak and dagger falls.
Shall I dare
Suggest you loved it too,
As every motive and its opposite
Is true.
For I have known you well already
Known you well,
Your life is like a map,
Plotted with my wiretaps
And the mundane talk from microphones
And your footsteps tap tap tap,
And I smiled at that.
And I have known your world already
Known it well,
Like strangers in familiar clothes
Become familiar -- a figure up the walk
As I walk by nonchalant and steady.
Then how could I explain,
And confess the betrayals of my names and roles,
And how could I begin.
And I have known your words already
Known them well,
Words cajoling, soft and fond,
(And in the candlelight sweetly coaxing on.)
Is it blood on a dress
That makes me so obsess --
Words of frantic explanation or resignation --
Should I dare suggest you loved it too
And smile at that.
Should I say I've walked dark corridors
And heard hard-won truths exhaled like smoke
From the dying embers of broken men.
I should perch upon a gloating web
And choose a victim to drain dry.
And my conscience, my thoughts they rest peacefully
Knowing you will say it all,
In dreams of sodium pentothal.
Stretched up on a table by my gentle hands,
Should I after war and crisis,
Have the heart to tear down all disguises.
But though I have watched and waited,
Watched and stayed
And seen my honor (shopworn, yes)
Assailed in the streets
It matters not whom I might meet.
I have seen the footage flash and flicker,
And the bullseye angels whine and bicker,
And in short -- I was bored.
So would it have meaning in the end,
After the intrigues and the traitors,
In marble halls, amid hushed talk of you and me;
Would it have meaning all the same,
To set the documents aflame
And reduce our work to cinders
Sent flying out the flue.
And come riding on a white horse,
Come back to take you, to take you far,
If one regaining her composure
Should say, "You never were the one at all.
You never were the one at all."
So would it have meaning in the end,
Would it have meaning,
After Mata Hari and the Rosenbergs
And the spy planes crashed;
After trials, after purges,
And the noose that hangs above the door,
And all that's buried 'neath the floor
I would not tell you all that I could.
But if we stood revealed,
Deciphered plain as day,
Would it have meaning --
If one taking off her glasses
And staring at the wall
In untold weariness declared,
"You were not the one at all.
You never were the one at all."
I am no white knight nor pretend to be,
Am a cipher with a pad and pen,
An aide-de-camp to greater men,
A toady -- drab and epicene.
With something of the clown that scares
The children with his manic grin
And painted mouth and leering stares
In the darkness of some great machine.
And it fades, it fades,
My friends all walk among the shades.
Do I try to make amends
Or stand defiant to the last.
I am consigned to the footnotes
And the relics of the past.
I have heard the white doves calling
Each to each.
I have learned they will not call for me.
I have seen them rushing skyward above the Mall,
Gracing the grey stone of our lifeless power
As it surely falls like Babel's Tower.
We have worked the trapdoors of history,
And watched the players live and die
'Til angelic voices wake us
And we lie.