Now playing - Bach-Bukowski

The Bluebird

there's a bluebird in my heart
that wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see you.

there's a bluebird in my heart
that wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him
and inhale cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that he's in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart
that wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,stay down,
do you want to mess me up?
you want to screw up the works?
you want to blow my book sales in Europe?

there's a bluebird in my heart
that wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let
him out at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little in there,
I haven't quite let him die
and we sleep together like that
with our secret pact
and it's nice enough to make a man weep,
but I don't weep,

do you?

**********

This CD is weird: preludes and fugues from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier accompanying poems by Charles Bukowski: the pianist and singer is Willem van Ekeren. I'd never have thought the words and music would go together, but they do (sort of).

Bukowski was one of the writers I discovered through Bernard Levin's column in The Times, which I read as a schoolboy and undergraduate. Strange again: even then I disliked Levin's politics, and read his column to disagree with it, but on literary matters our taste seemed very similar. Through him I discovered Bukowski, and A.S.J. Tessimond, and others: he also wrote about authors who were already favourites (I remember his enthusiasm for William Friedman's book about the Shakespearean ciphers, which I had recently found for myself). Bukowski is a writer I don't read often but who has come into my life by chance at different times (Levin's article, a tape I came across in an art gallery, now this CD) and he always seems authentic.