A few days after the City Lights concert at Powell, and I am not the only one still harboring memories of delight. My wife and I and newly engaged friends were there on Friday night and we all, when it ended, looked at each other with such happy faces. Chaplin’s comedy truly is timeless. He produces laughter that surprises you in its making. When did you laugh so hard, and so openly, without constraint? The orchestra got everything right in regards to the moods, the emotions, the drama and pathos of Chaplin’s Tramp. What fun!
I thought I’d offer up Hart Crane’s poem “Chaplinesque,” which also gets everything right.
Chaplinesque
We will make our meek adjustments,
Contented with such random consolations
As the wind deposits
In slithered and too ample pockets.
For we can still love the world, who find
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow coverts.
We will sidestep, and to the final smirk
Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb
That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,
Facing the dull squint with what innocence
And what surprise!
And yet these fine collapses are not lies
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.
The game enforces smirks; but we have seen
The moon in lonely alleys make
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,
And through all sound of gaiety and quest
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.
