Love's Lost Labours

Ya know, sometimes it just don't work out.

The Bard - who wrote plays and poems prayers and promises,  as well as an episode of Moonlighting - recognized this in the 1950s, er, I mean the 1590s (I must have sexdaily dyslexia).

Then, in the 1960s Jimmy Webb wrote (and Richard Harris popularized), the following elegant elegy (and maybe a bit trippy) to lost romance:

Spring was never waiting for us, girl

It ran one step ahead

As we followed in the dance

Between the parted pages and were pressed

In love's hot, fevered iron

Like a striped pair of pants

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark

All the sweet, green icing flowing down

Someone left the cake out in the rain

I don't think that I can take it

Cause it took so long to bake it

And I'll never have that recipe again

Oh, no!

I recall the yellow cotton dress

Foaming like a wave

On the ground around your knees

The birds, like tender babies in your hands

And the old men playing checkers by the trees.

...

There will be another song for me

For I will sing it

There will be another dream for me

Someone will bring it

I will drink the wine while it is warm

And never let you catch me looking at the sun

And after all the loves of my life

After all the loves of my life

You'll still be the one.

Well, what's old is new, and vice-versa.  In 2007, a Texas-born songwriter who has possibly been mentioned on these pages from time to time, with collaborator Steuart Smith, wrote these lyrics in a similar vein using many of the same images and metaphors, but recognizing the endurance of weathering life's seasons; acceptance, healing, and steadfastnest - and the hope of renewal:

I've been biding time with the crows and sparrows

While peacocks prance and strut upon the stage

If finding love is just a dance

Proximity and chance

You will excuse me if I skip the masquerade.

And I've been waiting in the weeds

Waiting for the dust to settle down along the

Back roads running through the fields

Lying on the outskirts of this lonesome town

And I imagine sunlight in your hair

You're at the county fair

You're holding hands and laughing

And now the Ferris wheel has stopped

You're swinging on the top

Suspended there with him.

And he's the darling of the chic

The flavor of the week is melting

Down your pretty summer dress

Baby, what a mess you're making.

I've been stumbling through some dark places

Now I'm following the plow

I know I've fallen out of your good graces

It's all right now.

And I've been waiting in the weeds

Waiting for the summer rain to fall upon the

Wild birds scattering the seeds

Answering the calling of the tide's eternal tune

The phases of the moon

The chambers of the heart

The egg and dart

A small gray spider spinning in the dark

In spite of all the times the web is torn apart.