Poem 167

John Lennon’s been shot dead – I can remember thinking no, people get shot but not shot dead (eg. a few months later Ronald Reagan and the Pope were also shot – both old men, both recovered) …

… I was at a friend’s house and someone rang up with the news … it was late afternoon here, still only a few hours after it happened … it hit me hard in ways that I didn’t necessarily understand … we were supposed to go out that evening but I stayed home by myself and wrote not one but two poems … the difference between the responses is interesting, the second despite its brittle armour actually more anguished than the first …

… I sent both poems to The Listener the next day with some crazy idea that they could stop the presses and print them the following week, poetry as immediate commentary … I can just imagine what they thought and said on opening the envelope … but as naive as the impulse was (I’d just turned twenty) actually the poems are better than that …

December 9th 1980

(i)

Last night the wife said
oh boy when you're dead
you don't take nothing with you but your soul
- think!

They're playing your songs on the radio
but I listen with half a mind
I'm thinking about some words you wrote
in another place and time
I'm thinking it's easy to kill John Lennon
but it's harder to end his song
and though you missed your beat
on a New York street
the world still sings along

I think you didn't come from Liverpool
by this long and unlikely path
just to die in New York city
where the killers collect autographs
so it was easy to kill John Lennon
but it's going to take more than a gun
to stop his song from spreading
or destroy the things he's done

and though you said your soul
was all you take from here
I can feel there's something missing
that I never knew was there
it took your killer to show me
how much it meant believing
somewhere in this world
John Lennon was still breathing



(ii)

a few hours ago it was personal
now it's just news again
a freak with a gun
collected your autograph
and put a couple of bullets through you
who wants to try and figure his head?
I just know if I want someone alive
there's someone else to want them dead

DOA
you step out of it
and we carry on as best we can
some of your old friends
might be getting out of their cars slower
hiring an extra man
or hiding beneath their beds
I just know I wanted you alive
and the paper said Ex-Beatle
Shot Dead