Poem 491

This is my version of what I thought was a classic country ballad – but in fact the song turns out to have been written in 1959 (year of my birth) … I first heard it by The Band on Music From Big Pink and became quite fascinated by its lyric economy and elegance and its story … the more I thought about it the more I felt there was something wonky about the morality of the song’s narrator paying with his life rather than compromise a woman’s reputation … I started to wonder about the woman and what her motives might be in not stepping forward, who was the dead man anyway and if the over-ethical narrator didn’t do it who did? … slowly my conviction emerged (I’m a dramatist after all) that this woman in a veil was the manipulative force behind it all and that in one neat and tidy solution she had suckered the narrator and achieved what she wanted while making sure she would never be exposed … and what’s more (as he realises too late) she enjoyed the whole manoeuvre …

… so the key differences in my version are that the murdered man is the only friend of the narrator who has nobody else to vouch for him in a callous hostile and corrupt township and that the impassive woman watching her lover hang is not torn between guilt and fear but is instead concealing her excitement and sense of power at causing his death … some people are just wicked – some of those people are women …

… ballads such as these were always changed and transformed by the various hands they passed through and the storytellers who adapted them to their own times contexts and worldview – so I enjoyed becoming part of that tradition … though the basic structure is retained, every verse but the last four lines has been reshaped by me …

( I like the rhymes but especially veil/tell … the electrifying image in the second chorus is what lifts this from traditional into something more alarming – without it the story is really nothing, putting it in runs the risk of the reader/listener being repelled – but it’s on that edge that new art is made and new forms evolve … )

Long Black Veil

Ten years ago
beneath this dark cold town
my friend lay silent
with his throat cut round

the night was black
memories were poor
but all stood up and said
it was my face they saw

judge of the district
rubbed his sleepy eyes
he said son now speak
do you have an alibi

I spoke not a word
on who could I depend
I'd spent that night sleeping
with the wife of my only friend

                 she walks these streets
                 in a long black veil
                 and what she's done
                 no living man can tell

the day was bright
the platform was high
I saw her in the crowd
and knew she would not cry

I tried to shout
so the truth could appear
but my words fell down
the empty sides of her stare

                   she walks these streets
                   when the night wind moans
                   she kneels by my grave
                   and masturbates with my bones

                   and nobody knows
                   nobody sees
                   nobody knows
                   but me