Marianne Faithful lyric...once sung by Donovan Leitch in 1965...Awakened me at 18 years old to possibilities of poetry in popular song...

On the firefly platform
on sunny Goodge Street
a violent hash-smoker
shook a chocolate machine
involved in an eating scene.

Smashing into neon streets
in their stillness,
smearing their eyes
on the crazy kerb goddess.
Listening to sounds
of Mingus mellow fantastic.
My my, they sigh,

In dull house rooms
with coloured lights swinging
strange music boxes
sadly tinkling,
drinking the sun
shining all around you.
My my, they sigh.

The magician, he sparkles
in satin and velvet.
You gaze at his splendour
with eyes you've not used yet.
I tell you his name
is love love love.
My my, they sigh.

Not so amazing now, but in 1965 this was an expanding notion of music.

Owen, 10 pounds, 6 ounces, and 21 and 3/4 inches...a new grandson....Maureen and David's first!

Owen and Maureen




Look at the feet!



Owen with little hand booties on

Saying Goodbye to Very Young Children, by John Updike, from Americana and Other Poems (Knopf).

They will not be the same next time. The sayings
so cute, just slightly off, will be corrected.
Their eyes will be more skeptical, plugged in
the more securely to the worldly buzz
of television, alphabet, and street talk
culture polluting their gazes' dawn blue.
It makes you see at last the value of
those boring aunts and neighbors (their smells
of summer sweat and cigarettes, their faces
like shapes of sky between shade-giving leaves)
who knew you from the start, when you were zero,
cooing their nothings before you could be bored
or knew a name, not even your own, or how
this world brave with hellos turns all goodbye.