Gone Away Blues

Sirs, when you are in your last extremity,

When your admirals are drowning in the grass-green sea,

When your generals are preparing the total catastrophe—

I just want you to know how you can not count on me.

I have ridden to hounds through my ancestral halls,

I have picked the eternal crocus on the ultimate hill,

I have fallen through the window of the highest room,

But don’t ask me to help you ’cause I never will.

Sirs, when you move that map-pin how many souls must dance?

I don’t think all those soldiers have died by happenstance.

The inscrutable look on your scrutable face I can read at a glance—

And I’m cutting out of here at the first chance.

I have been wounded climbing the second stair,

I have crossed the ocean in the hull of a live wire,

I have eaten the asphodel of the dark side of the moon,

But you can call me all day and I just won’t hear.

O patriotic mister with your big ear to the ground,

Sweet old curly scientist wiring the birds for sound,

O lady with the Steuben glass heart and your heels so rich and round—

I’ll sent you a picture postcard from somewhere I can’t be found.

I have discovered the grammar of the Public Good,

I have invented a language that can be understood,

I have found the map of where the body is hid,

And I won’t be caught dead in your neighborhood.

O hygienic inventer of the bomb that’s so clean,

O lily white Senator from East Turnip Green,

O celestial mechanic of the money machine—

I’m going someplace where nobody makes your scene.

Good-by, good-by, good-by,

Adios, au ’voir, so long,

Sayonara, dosvedanya, ciao,

By-by, by-by, by-by.

Copyright Credit: Thomas McGrath, “Gone Away Blues” from The Movie at the End of the World: Collected Poems, published by Swallow Press/Ohio University Press. Copyright © 1972 by Thomas McGrath. Reprinted by permission of Swallow Press/Ohio University Press.

Source: The Movie at the End of the World: Collected Poems (Swallow Press, 1972)