Bob Dylan: Nettie Moore

I wasn't a big Bob Dylan fan as a youngster, but I'm a big one now -- especially of his later works on Modern Times. Here are the lyrics to one of my favorites on the album. It loses something in the reading, so I think it's far better to listen to it -- you can check it out at bobdylan.com where all his songs are featured. Go out and buy this album or download it!


Nettie Moore

Lost John's sittin' on a railroad track
Something's out of whack
Blues this mornin' fallin' down like hail
Gonna leave a greasy trail

Gonna travel the world is what I'm gonna do
Then come back and see you.
All I ever do is struggle and strive.
If I don't do anybody any harm, I might make it back home alive.

I'm the oldest son of a crazy man,
I'm in a cowboy band
Got a pile of sins to pay for and I ain't got time to hide
I'd walk through a blazing fire, baby, if I knew you was on the other side

Oh, I miss you, Nettie Moore
And my happiness is o'r
Winter's gone, the river's on the rise
I loved you then, and ever shall
But there's no one left here to tell
The world has gone black before my eyes

Well, the world of research has gone berserk
Too much paperwork
Albert's in the graveyard, Frankie's raising hell
I'm beginning to believe what the scriptures tell

I've gone where the Southern crosses The Yellow Dog
Get away from all these demagogues
And these bad luck women stick like glue
It's either one or the other or neither of the two

She says, "Look out, daddy, don't want you to tear your pants
You could get wrecked in this dance."
They say whisky'll kill you, but I don't think it will
I'm ridin' with you to the top of the hill

Oh, I miss you, Nettie Moore
And my happiness is o'r
Winter's gone, the river's on the rise
I loved you then, and ever shall
But there's no one left here to tell
The world has gone black before my eyes

Don't know why my baby never looked so good before
Don't have to wonder no more
She been cooking all day, it gonna take me all night
I can't eat all that stuff in a single bite

The judge's coming in, everybody rise
Lift up your eyes
You can do what you please, you don't need my advice
'Fore you call me any dirty names, you better think twice

Gettin' light outside, the temperature dropped
I think the rain has stopped
I'm gonna make you come to grips with fate
When I'm through with you, you'll learn to keep your business straight

Oh, I miss you, Nettie Moore
And my happiness is o'r
Winter's gone, the river's on the rise
I loved you then, and ever shall
But there's no one left here to tell
The world has gone black before my eyes

The bright spark of the steady lights
Has dimmed my sights
When you're around me all my grief gives 'way
A life time with you is like some heavenly day

Everything I've ever known to be right has been proven wrong
I'll be drifting along
The woman I'm loving she rules my heart
No knife could ever cut our love apart.

Today I'll stand in faith and raise
The voice of praise
The sun is strong, I'm standing in the light
I wish to God that it were night

Oh, I miss you, Nettie Moore
And my happiness is o'r
Winter's gone, the river's on the rise
I loved you then, and ever shall
But there's no one here left to tell
The world has gone black before my eyes

Men's League Softball, Gillette, Wyoming

Out of the broad, open land they come.
Out of a coal seam's
$!
hundred-thousand tons

of overburden, out of shit-reek barns
and shearing pens,

or down from the powder blue

derrick platforms of howling Cyclone rigs
they rung by rung descend.

They come bearing the weight

of lives and labor on their boot heels,
a week of night shifts,

of the prairie sun's relentless arc.

But here, beneath the lights of Bicentennial Park,
these men work the stiffness

from their shoulders,

crow-hop and sling the ball sharply
around the horn. No matter

who they've become

in the years since boyhood, the game's
muscular beauty remains.


-- Lucas Howell











This is Lucas at the right.
My apologies to him for the wrong formatting of his
poem. Blogger won't let me justify the single lines.
They're supposed to be over to the right.

You can see the original formatting here.
You can read his Primitive Road here.


Today's Poetry Friday is being hosted at music-loving Kelly Polark at her blog here.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$And

Poetry Friday: Pangur Ban

Myself and Pangur, cat and sage
Go each about our business;
I harass my beloved page,
He his mouse.

Fame comes second to the peace
Of study, a still day
Unenvying, Pangur's choice
Is child's play.

Neither bored, both hone
At home a separate skill
Moving after hours alone
To the kill

When at last his net wraps
After a sly fight
Around a mouse; mine traps
Sudden insight.

On my cell wall here,
His sight fixes, burning,
Searching; my old eyes peer
At new learning,

And his delight when his claws
Close on his prey
Equals mine when sudden clues
Light my way.

So we find by degrees
Peace in solitude,
Both of us, solitaries,
Have each the trade

He loves: Pangur, never idle
Day or night
Hunts mice; I hunt each riddle
From dark to light.


-- Unknown 9th Century Irish Monk
translated from Irish by Eavan Boland



There are many translations of this poem, written by an Irish Monk in the Monastery of St Paul, Carinthia, Austria. It was written in the margins of an illuminated manuscript. You can find the original Irish version here.

Pangur Ban means white cat.

Another monk, Bartolomaeus Anglicus (Bartholomew the Englishman), a 13th c. Franciscan monk and encyclopedist who wrote this entry describing, in part, the cat.

And hath a great mouth and saw teeth and sharp and long tongue and pliant, thin, and subtle.

And lappeth therewith when he drinketh... And he is a full lecherous in youth, swift, pliant and merry, and leapeth and rusheth on everything that is before him and is led by a straw, and playeth therewith;

and is a right heavy beast in age and full sleepy, and lieth slyly in wait for mice and is aware where they be more by smell than by sight, and hunteth and rusheth on them in privy places.

And when he taketh a mouse, he playeth therewith, and eateth him after the play.





The illustrations pictured above are not from that manuscript as far as I know, but you can read more about Pangur Ban's history here.




Poetry Friday is being hosted today by Amy over at Ayuddha

Poetry Friday: High Flight

Before you read this, you will want to watch the astonishing Wing Suit video in the post directly below this one. What a rush! Don't miss it . . .

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark nor even eagle flew—

And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

-- John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

If you'd like to read more about Magee's tragically short life and this poem, check out a brief biography.


There are some great still aerial images of Boston.com's featured photographer Brian Buckland.


Thanks to Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect for hosting today's Poetry Friday. Click here to see this week's offerings.

A Month of Love and Lust

True love begins with algebra
Those casual actors x and y,
Nonentities whose magic role
Is to turn nothing into all.
To be and not to be: to mate:
The links are chance, the chain is fate.

Michael Hamburger
from The Mathematics of Love

Her light shining in the darkness made everything tremble
The hills began dancing like rams.
"Oh Lord," I thought, "Our secrets will be discovered,"
But she reached back at once with her powerful hands
And covered us both with her long black hair,
And once again it was night.

Judah al-Haziri
(13th century Hebrew poet)

As the light comes through
And the night is turning into day
I want to know I'll die before you
I want to know I'll die before
We aren't lovers anymore

Sam Shepard

from Savage Love

Wild Rose Reader is hosting today's Poetry Friday. Check it out here: http://wildrosereader.blogspot.com/2009/02/poetry-friday-roundup-is-here.html