AG: The other thing, in answer to your question, what else had I been doing at the time, I had just been in the middle of a broken up love affair with Neal Cassady which had come to an end at the moment, I thought, and so I was desolate and so combining the end of the love affair and the visionary experience, a song, called “A Western Ballad”. These are all poems written in the Summer of 1948.
[Allen begins singing, accompanied by his harmonium]
When I died, love, when I died/ my heart was broken in your care;/I never suffered love so fair/ as now I suffer and abide/ when I died, love, when I died./ When I died, love, when I died/ I wearied in an endless maze/that men have walked for centuries,/ as endless as the gate was wide/ when I died, love, when I died./ When I died, love, when I died/there was a war in the upper air:/all that happens, happens there;/there was an angel at my side/when I died, love, when I died,/ when I died, love, when I died,/when I died, love, when I died.”
That was influenced a lot by Blake. “I wearied in an endless maze/that men have walked for centuries,” which was a paraphrase of I guess one of the Blake poems, I forget which, I think “The Voice of the Ancient Bard”. “They stumble all night over bones of the dead;/…/And wish to lead others when they should be led.”
AG: What time is it now?
Student(s): Twenty after two.
AG: Okay, we have a few minutes.
Anne Waldman: No, we’re supposed to go to three-thirty
AG: Hmmm.
Anne Waldman: Three-thirty.
AG: Okay. Well, then we’ve got time. Now, same time, I was….
Student: Allen?
AG: Yeah?
Student: Was that music part of the poem from the very beginning?
AG: No, I put that in maybe twenty years later. Actually I heard it, it was actually there, but at the time I didn’t have an instrument and I didn’t play music but it was sort of built into the rhythm of the poem; the exact notes probably not but duh-duh-dah-duh, duh-duh-dah. Duh-duh-dah-duh, duh-duh-dah. It was called originally “A Western Ballad” and I had the idea of I guess I don’t know what song. [Allen begins singing] “I ain’t got no use for the women/A true one can never be found/They’ll stick with a man when he’s winnin’/and laugh in his face when he’s down/My friend was an honest cowpuncher/honest and upright and true/and he’d still be a-ridin’ the ranges/if it weren’t for a gal named Lou/He fell in with evil companions/the kind that were better off dead/And I couldn’t help think of that woman/When I saw him on his death bed”. or whatever. That was the only western ballad I knew but I was singing that about the time.
to be continued