Pass That Stage

We don't Hesitate 
To try and Create
And then Perpetuate
Fictitious impressions.

Courteous words like:
"Thank you, I'm sorry, Please & 
Would you forgive me?"

Which we once knew --
Have now become 
Forgotten things of the Past.

  

We Convict and Condemn in our Minds
Our bosom pals without a Trial;
But this Wickedness, Crookedness
Stupid and Malicious guile is out of Style.

Can't people construct and Try to engage
In something to Alleviate this present Shortage?

Control the Urge to Damage
And as A People be less Savage --

In this Day and Age --
Remember We Pass That Stage.

Note:  This Mighty Sparrow song, which I first heard on Van Dyke Parks' great The Clang Of The Yankee Reaper album, has been running through my mind consciously all day and subconciously for at least the past five years.  Van Dyke abbreviated Sparrow's lyrics and I've abbreviated them a bit more and (I hope not too effetely) adjusted the typography and punctuation.  Isn't it a great song?

Youtube unfortunately abridged Sparrow's track to an incomplete 3:46 below, but it's probably the best 3:46 you'll ever hear.  I wish I could enunciate and ellide like Sparrow does and also record my own thoughts so trenchantly. 

Van Dyke's version is integral and wonderful.

Forget the other grand monuments of the past and present and also those that are planned for the future on the Washington D.C. Mall, which have been in the news lately.

It’s the last six lines of Sparrow’s lyrics that really deserve graven publication, don't you think?

Links:

We Pass That Stage -- Mighty Sparrow

Pass That Stage -- Van Dyke Parks

'Gozo my child is the isle of Calypso' (Edward Lear)

Gozo my child is the isle of Calypso

That naughty young woman who made egg flip so

And all day long with a spoon did sip so,

And every morn in the sea did dip so

Whereon Ulysses seeing her strip so

And all of her beautiful ringlets drip so

From her beautiful head to her beautiful hipso

Because her curls she would never clip so,

--  Took to staying away from his ship so,

And she his mariners all did trip so

And fed them with chickens that had the pip so

For fear he should ever give her the slip so

And over the ocean start for a trip so

    Singing – (with peculiar sweetness --) "This is

I who have wheedled the wily Ulysses,

With kurls and cobwebs and kustards and kisses

    Gip so, whip so, crip so, and quip so

    Flip so, bip so, rip so and zip so –

          O naughty Calypso!

Which has made the little hills for to skip so!”

Key:  

Upper: Arnold Böcklin, Odysseus By The Sea, 1869

 

Lower: Arnold Böcklin, Odysseus and Calypso, 1883