for Marie in honour of her 80th Birthday

It has been too many years
Since I played these tapes
And unpacked your gravelly voice:
Or as one wit said
an ‘octave below laryngitis’
 
Yet it is the girlishness that surprises.
Not so much the quiver
Nor how well the notes are held
But the way the words unfold
Like the pulse of a rabid toxin.
 
The hard edged world
Of Berlin and Babel
Float across time
Cadential
Like a shimmering fable:
Erst kommt das Fressen
Dann kommt die Moral.
 
You ratchet that voice
And iconic swig
Hands on hips
Jaw set square
With a song that retrieves generations:
 
The ache and hunger
Their bitter fear
The spectre of nightly injustice
The lonely voices
That whisper in vain
For the simplest of pleasures
The tang of gain.
 
The young girls bleed
And the wise man sings
While the moon dips low
On the bar room floor
And the years of struggle
Are chillingly played
Etched in lines of withering rage.
 
Then the class struggle
Could not be leached
From these western climes.
Then
Crime and loathing
Stalked a fitful world:
With the powerlessness that breeds contempt:
 
O keen voice
And striding words
March beside the culvert walls:
Let hunger and fear
Chime the tocsins knell!
 
Religion still stalks the land
The isms on fire
Chasing their tales in a holy war
Hunger below
Wealth above
Both expanding their bloated bellies:
The sky falls down.
 
In the shellac boom
Lenya’s words
Still sound this warning:
Those you see are in the daylight
Those in darkness don’t get seen.
 
 
Gar Jones:  June 2008/February 2017

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