June 13th, I was out of it. Had a headache that had lasted days. Tried to forget it by browsing the internet and found a mention that it was Yeats' birthday. I thought about some of his poems. Then, I started singing Salley Gardens quietly and to myself.
The first time I’d heard the song was from a young woman singing it on the Boston Commons sometime in the past. I’ve heard it plenty since then but, for me, the song is still connected to the image of that woman in the billowy blouse, her dark hair pouring from a beaded headband over the top of a big guitar. Like me, she was playing for coins. She cut me that day. Nothing to do but pack up my box and follow a group of folks toward her. Her voice was honey.
Yeats said his poem was a reconstruction of "an old song from three lines imperfectly remembered by an old peasant woman in the village of Ballisodare, Sligo, who often sings them to herself." I don’t know what that sounded like. It’s always Yeats’ words I sing, and it’s always the voice of the girl on the Boston Commons I hear behind me when I do.
That night, we both played short sets at the Turks Head on Charles Street--me and her, Railroad Pete, Swami Rivers, and some other folks. Afterwards, she waited behind a dumpster while a pal of mine who worked at a Greek restaurant passed out a bag of meat to me at the back door. Another pal looked the other way while we secreted beers under our jackets at the 24-hour store he managed. Then we went to the roof of the building where she lived, stuffed rolled newspapers into an old hibachi, and lit a fire. I recall the smell of roasting meat and how the edges of burning newsprint went up in lit fragments like fireflies. And how big the stars were all around.
We both had guitars, so we played. I lit a jay. We talked. We laughed plenty. Damned if I know over what. But we kept at it a long while until our voices went soft in the night. For the life of me, I can’t remember a single thing we said except when, half holding my breath, I asked if I could kiss her.
Now, I’m not saying playing a song is a surefire cure for a headache. Just that I was thinking about some hours in Boston when I reconstructed the guitar part and punched the recorder to sing this song on Yeats’ birthday. Sometimes, you just need to let out a little air.
credits
from All The Bone,
released August 23, 2017
Poem by W.B. Yeats
Vocal and guitar, Mark Ari
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