Three Of Diamonds - White Christmas
15 - Dylanesque Rant
Alas. Though fully-realized in my head, I simply don't have the time to finish this one tonight. So here's a rough version the first verse/stanza, a truncated second, and some explanations on where it's going. Maybe a completed version will end up on these pages in the near future (hold me to it D., S.)
Grey Christmas
Rolled out on the sidewalk in front of Pete's
I check my watch as I get to my feet
Thinking of her Irish curls and 'The Gift of the Magi'
It's my father's, it's stopped as I now recall and I
Continue my wassail down eighteenth street
Is 'Szechuan Aroma' serving nativity feast?
'Cause those ducks in the window sure look like Christmas geese
Got a whim to read The Good Book but the library's closing
After Mass by some New England fireplace she's dozing
But out of our deal I got the city at least
As I pass by The Old Town there's bustle and noises:
A piano, some sleigh bells and partridge voices
Of hatchet-faced women with combs in their hair
Minds on late-night shopping uptown somewhere
While the weary world rejoices
"...Why doth thy presence me defeat..." I hear somebody say
Christmas Eve was white this year but now the snow is grey
Here's where it breaks down.
He continues further downtown to McSorley's where he encounters a boxer-nosed bartender and a sad handful of patrons, dirty as miners, but never grown old. Smokey Robinson's "I Believe in Christmas Eve" is playing softly on the jukebox, and he notices the sawdust-free tiled floor. Filled with a Woody Guthrie flight of fancy, he begins:
Loudly addressing the near empty bar
I stand to play my invisible guitar
"See what your greed for money has done"
The Bartender yells "Be Good or Be Gone"
Scabs on his face tell me I've pushed him too far
The tab that I've wrought, more than I can repay
Christmas Eve was white this year, the air in here is grey
After getting thrown out of McSorley's "golden doors" he walks down to the Bowery and comments on how much it has changed. The closed-up lighting wholeseller storefronts remind him of Lord and Taylor shop windows, of walking up Fifth Avenue with his "Della", of peaceful snowfall in Rockefeller Center. Then there's a bad pun, a quote from O Holy Night and another nativity reference and then he:
Head(s) East across a city in decay
Christmas Eve was white this year but now the streets are grey
The whole thing ends with him on the esplanade somewhere far downtown, looking out on the ice floating in the East River (this happens from time to time), with the urge to skate upon it - quick flashback to Minnesota childhood - and then up at a snow-covered Statue of Liberty. There's a few phrases lifted (in proper Dylan fashion) from Emma Lazarus' New Colossus as well as another nod to Woody Guthrie's 1913 Massacre, dawn breaks, and then of course the modified refrain:
Christmas Eve was white this year but now the morning's grey
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