Told You Not to Wander 'Round in the Dark

It has been raining here for 7 or 8 days. It’s Biblical. Last night, I walked Stanley in the pouring rain and howling wind. The trees were heavy with rain, their leaves pulled down by a conspiracy of gravity and damp weariness. Stanley was happy, as he padded around looking for the right place to leave his doggy signature. I wore headphones and listened to the recent release of Cream Live at the Royal Albert Hall (2005). The streetlight at the corner had gone out, and as I rounded the bend with Stanley pulling at his leash, everything was ink black, sopping wet, and horror-movieish. The song "Badge" was on, a song originally written 35 years ago, or more, by Mr. Clapton and George Harrison. "I told you not to wander round in the dark. I told you about the swans that they live in the park. Then I told you about a kid, now he's married to Mabel." What does this mean? I don’t know. Shouldn't I be reciting Yeats instead? Jeez. The curse of the 60s. It’s my music, like it or not. The driving base, the searing lead guitar. The inane lyrics that seem, somehow, to speak to me—across the years--- with some poignant meaning, despite their inanity. The rain, the rain, the damn rain driving down. The dog looking for a place to poop, but he too, now growing weary of the rain. "I'm talking about a girl that looks quite like you. She didn’t have the time to wait in the queue. She cried away her life since she fell off the cradle." At least the trees are beautiful with the night all tangled up in them. An invisible beauty I need to imagine, because it is too damn black and windy for me see much, nor to linger here long. “You’d better pick yourself up off the ground, before they bring the curtain down.” Maybe this is a song about death? About the ineluctable fate that everyone must confront. Who cares if the 60s are 40 years in the past. Who cares that the past has passed. There is only a past for those who are living. For the dead there is nothing, not even nothing, because the deceased are no more. Auden: “What Happens to the living when we die?/Death is not understood by death; nor you, nor I.” Stanley, almost invisible in his poodle blackness, decides he’s had enough and tugs me in the direction of home. Which way is that, Stanley?