Nobody Can (Tell You)

Poemata CXII

“Are you waiting for the number 85 bus?” “I thought this was the stop for the number 73.” (1938)

Author’s note: This recording is decidedly imperfect. Yet to try to make yet another take and hope a certain 2-year-old did not wander into the room and cause mischief at the middle to the end of the recording was too much for my budget. Nonetheless I suppose its various “imperfections” (felicities?) may serve as its provenance. I’ll admit the poem itself is a take on “waiting for Godot”.

No-body can tell you
Everything you need to know
It's just the same today
As it was so long ago;

I've spent so long searching
But never, ever did I find
Over every foreign shore
In the depths of my mind;

But no-body told me
That they didn't know
Yes, they just insisted
That it couldn't be so!

But we're still here waiting
In the rain or the snow
And what we're waiting for
Nobody seems to know;

Some wait for the ending
Some are waiting to begin
But were it a bus or a train
By now we'd be getting in;

Yet no-body told me
That they didn't know
But they just insisted
That it couldn't be so!