| DELICATE I'm not certain Delicate is the Right word to use you understand, Because Delicate evokes images Of honeysuckle flowers Sweet as bee's drink In passionate summer. Long fingers embracing the trellis And holding like a lover In the tears of ecstasy. Delicate Yes, but with mysterious Autumn Flowers whither on choking stalks A rose perhaps Delicate filigree of fingers Woven on each petal Each petal floating languid on Still lake water It's bloom forever recalled In the memory of a game of Love-me, love-me-not. Your soft red hair in Each fate drenched blossom That will flow to the sea And drink forever of Sweet salt, like tears. Understand that I've dreamt, Long Spring days, of Your Delicate lips forming words like spider webs that Fall into the flower print of Your billowing skirt, Until wind comes and Blows spider webs away. And the tender work of Knitting each Delicate strand must begin As it has always begun, With cunning as Soft as red hair. But no, I realize that the Delicate flower of your beauty--- Your pale skin, Vine long legs, Red hair like rose sap Eyes held in Languid embrace, The rose petals falling on Flower print skirt Your fingers twist lazily Around honeysuckle stems--- Is the fragile Delicate spring Of a mouse trap Set so tenderly within The honeysuckle's withering flower. |
| Copyright (c) 2001 Kenny Klein Used by Permission |
| Poetry and Lyrics by Kenny Klein |
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No more the sword and the chalice, no more the stave and the mooncoin No more nights by the campfire singing in Tzigany When you traveled over the ocean, when you learned to speak in Yiddish When you wore your hair unfastened when they taught you how to read Oh, Sara, do you ever long for the campfires? Do you ever long for the sound of the rain on the Tin roof of your wagon? How I wish I'd known you picking lilacs on the mountains Not staring out the window at the city in the rain |
I dreamed last night of the wolf's cry Somewhere a child was crying Somewhere was the crying of a fiddle and the Men laughed as they gambled From the shadows by the fire I thought I heard somebody call you A pretty little girl in a colored skirt, your hair tied high behind you A tenement in Brooklyn where the neighbors whisper low in Russian Where the coffee tastes like water and the doors lock in your soul But late in the secret of moonlight, soft in the shadows of your kitchen The coin and the stave and the chalice speak the Language of the mountains Oh, Sara, do you ever long for the campfires? Do you ever long for the sound of the rain on the Tin roof of your wagon? How I wish I'd known you picking lilacs on the mountains Not staring out the window at the city in the rain It was a family secret that the old woman was a gypsy All material © Kenny Klein |
| THE OLD WOMAN WAS A GYPSY It was a family secret that the old woman was a gypsy The old woman from the mountains where the wolves run free A little girl from Hungary who once spent nights in a wagon Listening to the sounds of the horses and the tzimbolon play Oh, Sara, do you ever long for the campfires? Do you ever long for the sound of the rain on the Tin roof of your wagon? How I wish I'd known you picking lilacs on the mountains Not staring out the window at the city in the rain |
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