last week at Trivia there was a question boynton was happy not to answer, happy not to have noted, happy not to have clicked on the link that very day and gone off to see how much an autographed copy of the x album that x was holding when photographed with John Lennon hours before x. It's the anniversary - but we heard the news around 4 pm on the 9th - on a hot day like today sitting round a swimming pool not believing. Today in Literature looks at the book that has come to be associated with the event (another trivia staple) so we skimmed the stuff about x but found the Browning link brought back the old tears.
For Lennon and Yoko Ono, the most persistent and last literary connection was not Salinger but the Brownings. Lennon's last journal entry quotes the very un-Holden beginning of Robert Browning's "Rabbi Ben Ezra," turned into song in Lennon's last year—"Grow old along with me! / The best is yet to be...."
The poem is here and it ties in quite well with that bit of wisdom by Joanne to Santa I have been half good and half bad cited earlier.
Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped
All that I could never be
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped
Comments: growing old
That was a lovely run of ideas...
Posted by David at December 8, 2003 08:54 PM
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