Through the Looking Glass Gate of 1968

It was many, many years ago today

Sergeant Pepper thought he taught the band to play.

We been goin' in n' outa style,

'though we've traveled now for many a mile.

Yes, 'T'was many and many a year ago,

and whose years these were I think I know,

'cause I was born and raised in the Way down south;

Oh, Sweet potato pie and shut my mouth!

Meanwhile, suddenly down in Memphis

the tenser had gone to tensest

when the Man who was a Mountain said,

as though he were already dead:

I may not get there with you;

I may not get there with you,

and then suddenly he's gone where

I know he found a stair

way to heaven.

Film at eleven,

they said.

But He was already dead.



So then we woke up from the dream

of marmalade pie and soured cream

'T'was in that summer I hear them sayin,

while America was frayin':

Hell no! We won't go.

Bring your Democratic ass up to Chicago!

But we were agonizin'

while some bad moon was a-risin'.

I can't go there, I say I say.

Me gots to work; me gots to stay,

so I'll meet you there in fourscore and seven.

Therefore, lest I catch that same stairway to heaven,

and I feel my engines revvin',

I think I'll just skip the part about film at eleven.

But then we said,

when even Bobby too was dead

Hell, just lock the door and throw away the key;

Jest let us go then, you and me.

Let us give up hope

'cause we can't any longer cope.

Let us lock the door and throw away the key,

me and thee, and them out there makes three.

But hey! I thought;

lest we all be sold and bought,

if we fall for that that old cynic's tune

just gag me with a spoon!

Back at the ranch, meanwhile,

and suddenly she's there at the turnstile.

We feel the women come and go;

we wonder why but we don't know.

They look for Michelangelo

but then the men don't show.

They went to where the flowers go

while Sergeant Pepper puts on his show.



Maybe I didn't know then what I don't know now,

so I thought I'd try to work it out somehow,

until I found myself caught up in a Fall,

and suddenly I caught it all.

So we wrote it all off as a loss,

when we hung it, later, on a damned old cross.

I'm sorry to burst you bubble;

but thanks for all our trouble.



Glass half-Full