The Singer

by Sean Eaton

—after Barbara’s “La Solitude”

You think your new hat’ll hide your blowsy attitude,
the dusk that haunts your eyes at noon, at parties.
It’s true that I’m tired, yet you follow like a faithful hound,
my solitude, my soiled clothes, my odd stench, my bare soul.

Are you comfortable above in the oak you’ve let grow tall,
hiding from your friends and your enemies alike? No matter
your direction, round-headed war-cries fills your ears and set
the stretched skin of your eardrums a-rumbling, a-thrumming.

What is lost can be found, and what cannot can be replaced;
But life would be simpler if I could put my brain in a suitcase
and take a vacation, for the leaves are falling and I am singing
of September in Vienna, my most Beautiful Love story, а̀ la, la la...

In your imagination great vessels still cross the seas, with singers
of later eras swelling their chambers. Such impracticality
has paltry use, but if two hundred bricks could build a house
we’d all be less sorrowful, though perhaps less grateful.

Is it your childhood, this knock on your door? No, it is the twin
angels of Progress and Crisis. From their grasping, one escape:
but if the Normandie could carry you into the land of the dead, or
safely into the wealth of the past, would you risk your life to board?

What is lost can be found, and what cannot can be replaced;
But life would be simpler if I could take my brain from its suitcase
and wash it as well as I wash the laundry: sudsing, massaging,
and rinsing while I sing Barbara to it, а̀ la, la la…

From the dark, a soft rain falls as you sniff at dead doves. I want
to complain, but I’m too tired, again, as I wend my way home.
Glittering shopfronts, all closed, illuminate you trotting beside me,
our face half in darkness, half in blue light. You tell me

what I already know, o little one: your black eyes are my own,
my socks rot in the washbasin. For you I declaw, and am heavy
with songs of sorrowful memories, o my bare soul. How
toothless, I think, as I sing a low song by the dark of my window:

Lа̀, le mal de vivre…oh, le mal de vivre…
Lа̀, le joie de vivre.. oh, le joie de vivre…

Sean Eaton is a poet from New England, USA. Past publication credits include Hawai`i Pacific Review, ANMLY, and About Place Journal.