Geezerhood, Part Two
So today is my dad’s eighty-first birthday. He says I don’t qualify as a geezer yet: “but not yet in the geezer range” is how he puts it. I must defer to him for a few obvious reasons, but for other obvious reasons I will continue the conceit, if you will (or if you won’t, for that matter). For one thing, I’m finding it increasingly fun to think about the company an aging musician keeps. And, perhaps, the audience an aging musician keeps. You may have noticed that so far this blog’s links to musicians all lead to people over 50. I do say “so far”–after all, it’s SongsForGrownups, not SongsForGrandparents. But really, there must be a reason so many musicians never really retire.
Anyway, one of my father’s accomplishments is a master’s degree in music. He exposed me very early to Charles Ives, Igor Stravinsky, Vaughan-Williams and Aaron Copland, and to John Coltrane and Harry Belafonte. (Mom was there with Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Burl Ives, The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel.) He is also a poet. In the seventies I was moved to put one of his poems to music, which will be my next offering. Purely by coincidence, the lineup is the same as “Aurora’s”, with Gary on tenor this time. The poem is the first in a group that Dad wrote in 1969-70, called “John Trover”. Herewith, by permission of the author, I present them.
John Trover
by Rowell Hoff
1.Trover Dies
Citywalking sharp of edge downtown—
It hurts to touch eyes;
if eyegates were opened would all of us drown,
rushing down-drain to die?Laserlancet glances, meeting, million their power.
An instant’s too much!
The iron bubble-surface collapses, the sour
selfwomb waters gush.John Trover, doomed to citywalk all his days
unto his death,
came to love beggars and followed them always.
A beggar never neglectsto greet a passing stranger. After a time
the beggars tired of him.
Wordless, they would take his dime,
turning away their eyes.After Trover’s death of loneliness,
beggars robbed him.
He’d have been glad for such forgiveness.
Streetsweepers found the body.2.The Myth of John Trover
Trover tired of pushing a trash of moments up each day
to crash with him sleeping to bottom of the next,
and stopped. Imagine his dismay
to find himself again at the top of sunset falling down nights alone
over and over. He screamed for mercy.‘You chose to be a stone,’ said Sisyphus,
‘What rights has a stone?’3. John Trover’s Toy
It danced on a string, golden as the sun;
moreover, it was an astonishing unique machine,
potentially able to —
But Trover let them prick its skin
In exchange for their sending the loneliness away.
Even then the reduced dream
was privately beautiful and useful in small ways.
He used it to measure the passage of years,
secretly planning to put it right with patches
and sometime to inflate it with his breath.
Contemplating it one day,
he let it slip from his hand
to the hard ground.
It won’t run any more
and cannot be repaired.4. Trover Alone
John Trover was admiring the sunset. He thought
of running to the house to bring the others out.
They wouldn’t come, and it was night already
when he returned.He sent a letter about it to a friend.
The letter was returned unwritten.5. Trover Blest
Trover cut open his heart
and gazed at the chambers within
to gauge the extent of his hurt.A hundred dead bodies were there.
They murmured, ‘It’s you that we love!’
but Trover destroyed them with fire.In spite of the pain he probed on.
A mirror was hid in the dark.
He cleaned it and prayed for the sun.He turned to easts and horizons,
followed winds, drowned in oceans,
searched rivers to the source.
He lay in a desert dying. It was then
his mirror caught the light of noon.This is how Trover was raised from the dead.
It would be nice to come back to these and put the rest to music–who knows?
After President Obama’s election, my dad and stepmother Carol were the subject of an item in China Daily. (Oh, I forgot to mention that they live in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. It’s in the article.) I’ll let you read that too, because it tells a bit about them, and indirectly about Dad’s influence on me and my attitudes about the world.
Hope for a better tomorrow
By Patrick Whiteley (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-11-10
Eighty-year-old English teacher Rowell Hoff and his wife Carol live in Inner Mongolia and like thousands of US expats, were closely tuned into the elections last week. The couple say they were greatly pleased with the historic outcome because of the ramifications.
Rowell says the election result is a giant step in the development of true equality in the United States.
“Sixty years ago, in any of a large number of states, black citizens were prevented from voting,” he says.
“Even after the partial successes of the civil rights movement in the third quarter of the 20th century, it would have been difficult to imagine that this day would come at any foreseeable time.
“But it has happened now.”
(Just follow the above links to get to the rest. )