The wrong side of New Year
26/12/08 12:46
Well the roads run four ways from the centre of town
I met her waiting on the corner one night
There was sleep in her eyes from that long bus ride out
Watching the lights of the cars headed south.
The years had been kind, though the city more cruel
It had hardened her face to the world.
You know it took me four years just to soften that smile,
Though there were nights when I would still see it turn.
And the girls they write letters,
And the boys they drink beer,
And the kids, they don’t know nothing else.
And the ghosts of the old boys whisper it clear;
They say you can’t reach the highway from here.
Well she took up guitar and she started a band
I declare she became quite a star.
She’d roll in at night with a rasp in her voice
From smoking cheap cigarettes in cheap roadside bars.
But her years in the city they had singled her out,
And she was tired of the whole town knowing her name.
I knew that December I was losing her again
When the band that she’d started quit playing.
We walked through the trees, said our goodbyes,
I swear Christmas was early that year.
And sometimes at night I can still hear her voice.
She says you can’t reach the highway from here.
And the girls they write letters,
And the boys they drink beer,
And the kids, they don’t know nothing else.
And the ghosts of the old boys whisper it clear;
They say you can’t reach the highway from here.
Happy Christmas. JC.
I met her waiting on the corner one night
There was sleep in her eyes from that long bus ride out
Watching the lights of the cars headed south.
The years had been kind, though the city more cruel
It had hardened her face to the world.
You know it took me four years just to soften that smile,
Though there were nights when I would still see it turn.
And the girls they write letters,
And the boys they drink beer,
And the kids, they don’t know nothing else.
And the ghosts of the old boys whisper it clear;
They say you can’t reach the highway from here.
Well she took up guitar and she started a band
I declare she became quite a star.
She’d roll in at night with a rasp in her voice
From smoking cheap cigarettes in cheap roadside bars.
But her years in the city they had singled her out,
And she was tired of the whole town knowing her name.
I knew that December I was losing her again
When the band that she’d started quit playing.
We walked through the trees, said our goodbyes,
I swear Christmas was early that year.
And sometimes at night I can still hear her voice.
She says you can’t reach the highway from here.
And the girls they write letters,
And the boys they drink beer,
And the kids, they don’t know nothing else.
And the ghosts of the old boys whisper it clear;
They say you can’t reach the highway from here.
Happy Christmas. JC.
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Festivities
17/12/08 11:52
A proper update to come soon; nothing, alas, seems to
be slowing down for Christmas. However, in the brief
shopping period left before Christmas, I wanted to
refer back to a passing allusion I made to the
greatness of Richard Ford some weeks ago and
encourage those of you who, like me, had left him on
the shelf in favour of those great misanthropes
Updike and Roth, to acquire from St Nick all three
volumes of his Frank Bascombe trilogy. More lyrical
and less self conscious than Updike, Ford reminds me
of an American Robertson Davies. If the point of
literature is that it reflects life back at one and
allows the communion of solace with a more romantic
version of the self, then Richard Ford may very well
be the great writer of the late twentieth century.
And I’d stand on Don Delillo’s coffee
table in my cowboy boots and say that.
