Lester named her Lady Day 

Billie

Sailors on shore leave
Canadians in jubilant New York
coming home from the war
eyes older, tongues spitting curses
they wouldn't be caught dead
saying a year ago, when they
first left home.

One of them is my father
barely twenty-one, earlobes
so fat under navy haircut,
teeth busting open his mouth
kind of smile you see on every kid
who makes it back alive.

There's jazz tonight, and beer,
cigarette smoke thick as fog
saxophone player floating
smoke-rings into the dark
where lipstick girls with swept-up hair
press welcome-back bosoms
into roughened, tattooed arms.

There's one old girl there, alone
sipping hard stuff, white gardenia
fastened over left ear,
and now the saxophone man
calls her to come up, sing.
She waves him off, but no,
he means it, he loves her
and asks again.

A few others know her,
cabaret card taken away
on trumped-up dope charge
unable to work in her own city,
traveling lonely trains to
other towns, clubs, hotels,
the mulatto side of legend.

Piano player lays soft beds
under midnight, high-heel bassnotes
walking the docks, drummer
brushing tears away as she
opens her lips, lonely sings
the one about the waterfront

I cover the waterfront
I'm watching the sea
Will the one I love
Be comin' back to me?

The young sailors stop talking,
set drinks down, listen
dig the tenor man opening
his mouth behind her petals,
sad eyes closing, letting
the song end the war, peace
wrap its warm overcoat
round her shoulders, waltz
her trembling heart
to morning.

DL

by Asmundur Sveinsson

Iceland #10 : Kjarval

Easter Sunday in Reykjavik. Waking to church bells
and the siren cries of cats in heat. I made coffee
and took it to Disa in bed. Those bells signify life to
me, not death but life. Someone is ringing them. We
have our coffee, shower, get dressed and go.

We toured three different art centers. At the gallery
near the docks, they had some unusual exhibits by a
growing hero of playful modern art, Olafur Eliasson,
one being a dark echo chamber with a neon horizon
line on all four walls. There were two chairs in the
center of the room. We sat in them and, as the neon
lines subtly changed colors, we sang together, an old
spiritual we could harmonize on. In another room, there
were floating spheres made of wire and colorful sticks,
which left rotating shadows on the walls. Next door,
there were children building things out of the same
colored sticks. This is art you can look at, play with,
participate in. Fun.

The second gallery is the original residence of the
sculptor, Asmundur Sveinsson, including a domed house
and a crescent-shaped studio, both buildings his own
design and realization with hardwood floors and light
portals in the walls and ceilings. His sculptures of
people are rather impressive in their tension, especially
one of a woman carrying buckets of water, made in
tribute to the laundry women of Laugavegur whom he
witnessed as a boy. There were two cats, one black,
one white, who took great pleasure relaxing amidst
these large, inspiring carvings.

The third gallery, Kjarvalsstadir, is dedicated to the
legendary Icelandic painter, Kjarval (1885-1972). He
did some of his growing up in the eastern fjords and
knew members of Disa´s family. I think you have here
a modern master, one worth your time to discover if
you have any interest in art. I bought a book about
him, and he proves to have been a very unique and
agile thinker, with some of that Icelandic mischief I
talked of earlier. He had a visitor once and, pointing
to a new painting, said, "This painting isn´t good
enough. There´s another painting underneath that
is better. You never know when the old is better than
the new. Let me show you what we can do about
that. Now I´ll pour turpentine over the painting. Then
it will wash away but the old one will remain. It´s this
way that we sometimes get to see bygone days in
our lives, except that then it´s providence doing
the splashing."

Another time, at a celebration of his birthday, Kjarval
commented to one of his friends, "My birthday has
been celebrated daily with high and low tide, old pal.
I once saw a beautiful rainbow at my foster father´s,
so nature must have a tradition somewhere. And it
must be connected with the rainbow. People insult
all of nature when they see something beautiful in it
and say, ´That´s Kjarval style.´ Persons like that
should be given trouble. When they see something
beautiful, they should say, instead, ´I wish that my
brother were here to see this with me.´"

After the art galleries, we walk around 101, the little
streets that I like so much. Most everything is closed
on Easter, but there is so much to look at. Statues,
the children chasing birds around the small town
squares, the secret alley walks joining the old streets
together, the way the light catches on the stone, on
the colors of the buildings, the clustered clubs where
music happens every night looking - as nightclubs do -
somewhat less regal in the light of day. There is one
hotdog stand open down by the Hotel Borg. The smell
of it makes me homesick. I order a chili dog, Disa a
regular eina med ollu. We take home some ice cream
for later, with hot chocolate fudge topping warm in a
separate container.

We had planned on a lamb dinner, but after the lavish
spread of lamb at Disa´s parents last night, we decide
that I´ll make a pizza instead. In baking it, it doesn´t
crispen the way Disa likes it. I put it back in the oven
briefly, but burn my finger doing this. Then I soak that
burned finger in ice water, and she continues with
serving the pizza and salad. We eat, but I have these
feelings, stirred up by the burn, perhaps. More likely
it´s a longing that sneaked up from within. In a minute
I have beads of tears sliding from the corners of my
eyes, and she does, too. The secret land of feeling.

Later, after touches, relaxing and finishing the wine,
I get out the guitar and sing for her. I do a medley
of songs by Fred Neil. I start with Everybody´s Talkin',
then The Dolphins, a Percy Mayfield song he did called
Please Send Me Somebody To Love, and close with
A Little Bit Of Rain. I do love Freddy's songs.

"And if I look back, I will remember the good times,
warm days filled with sunshine, and just a little bit
of rain...just a little bit of rain..."

You get to an age where the ones you love come
sharper to your memory and heart. Kjarval described
seeing the Icelandic landscape as though he were
"a man who suddenly sees his wife in a new light
because he has come to suspect that someone else
has just discovered her." I think, when you pass fifty,
death is that someone else, and so we live a little
more defiantly, a little more watchfully, guarding those
we love with resurgence and renewal, more cautious
of this shadowy intruder at the edges of evening.

DL

Kjarval http://www.art-iceland.com/kjarval.html