Chicago Songs

I sang to you and the moon
But only the moon remembers.
     I sang
O reckless free-hearted
          free-throated rhythms,
Even the moon remembers them
   And is kind to me.

Everybody loved Chick Lorimer in our town.
                    Far off
               Everybody loved her.
So we all love a wild girl keeping a hold
On a dream she wants.
Nobody knows now where Chick Lorimer went.
Nobody knows why she packed her trunk. . a few
     old things
And is gone,
                    Gone with her little chin
                    Thrust ahead of her
                    And her soft hair blowing careless
                    From under a wide hat,
Dancer, singer, a laughing passionate lover.

Were there ten men or a hundred hunting Chick?
Were there five men or fifty with aching hearts?
               Everybody loved Chick Lorimer.
                    Nobody knows where she's gone.

There's Chamfort. He's a sample.
Locked himself in his library with a gun,
Shot off his nose and shot out his right eye.
And this Chamfort knew how to write
And thousands read his books on how to live,
But he himself didn't know
How to die by force of his own hand -- see?
They found him a red pool on the carpet
Cool as an April forenoon,
Talking and talking gay maxims and grim epigrams.
Well, he wore bandages over his nose and right eye,
Drank coffee and chatted many years
With men and women who loved him
Because he laughed and daily dared Death:
"Come and take me."

Jack was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun.
He worked thirty years on the railroad, ten hours a day,
     and his hands were tougher than sole leather.
He married a tough woman and they had eight children
     and the woman died and the children grew up and
     went away and wrote the old man every two years.
He died in the poorhouse sitting on a bench in the sun
     telling reminiscences to other old men whose women
     were dead and children scattered.
There was joy on his face when he died as there was joy
     on his face when he lived -- he was a swarthy, swaggering
     son-of-a-gun.

I sang to you and the moon
But only the moon remembers.
     I sang
O reckless free-hearted
          free-throated rhythms,
Even the moon remembers them
   And is kind to me.