Where the Shadows Sing Loudest, the Light Springs Sweetest

My friend, Simon Ensor, shared a Guardian article about an exhibition of Anselm Kiefer’s dark and gloried work.  Here’s a sample:

Anselm Kiefer from his series, Der Gordische Knoten.
Photograph: Georges Poncet/courtesy White Cube

When I read the article, I felt compelled to draw out the powerful dark.  I needed to feel I had some control over this on a week where I will be spending a lot of time alone.  My wife is visiting with our daughters and her sisters out west.  Maybe I should not play with this fire. I did anyway and was glad I did.  Here’s the poem I found inside the article.

I was immediately reminded of two Randy Newman songs as a response. The first song, his unsurpassing anthem to heartbreak, “I Just Want You to Hurt Like I Do”, is also an even deeper message about songwriting, . Everyone who has ever written a song secretly wants to compel the listener to empathy like Newman does here.

Then I thought how perhaps a second song is a better fit, “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” He wrote it in 1966.  It is raining even now. And windy. And ugly. And human.

The lyrics are Tin Pan Alley simple:

 

And then I ran across Nina Simone’s version. Not better but easily the best cover I have ever heard and I have listened to a lot of them.

 

 

Yes,
I think it is going to rain.
The days shorten,
darken,
and disturb,
but we all sing on
in sweet harmony,
in tune-spent cacophony,
carrying on, carrying on
da capo al fine.

1 Comment


  1. // Reply

    (Go closer —
    the picture dissolves)

    I am waiting
    on the rain –
    so yes, you may
    call me over
    to the sheltered roof
    of your imagination,
    the awning of a conversation
    in verse

    I am waiting –
    the rain remains
    stubborn, clinging
    to the clouds
    always now looming
    on the horizon,
    a tangled mess of
    uncertainty and song

    I am –
    waiting, the rain
    remains of what I am
    thinking, that perhaps one
    poem won’t fall unless
    another poem joins it,
    some loosely formed idea
    the center that may not hold

    I –
    am
    waiting, rain
    drops around us, both,
    slow then steady,
    then deliberately hard, hardly
    a storm now but more
    of a windfall

    of words, for gravity
    is its own Gordian Knot,
    ain’t it, after all?

    (Nature is
    more complex
    than a picture)

    — Kevin

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