In celebration of the day after Father’s Day, I’d like to share a poem my father wrote. He’s quite the talented wordsmith, and I think everyone will find his stirring verse as inspirational as I did:
Ode to a Robin
As I awoke one morning
I heard a robin trill
A sound so bright and cheery
Upon my windowsill
What merry bursts of melody
This tiny creature chirped
A sound to ease the tragedies
Of life’s unending work
As I listened silently
A thought then crossed my mind
What kind of world would this world be
Without that voice divine?
With cheery notes piercing my brain
My thoughts from sleep still dull
I gently lowered the windowpane
And crushed his fucking skull
Pretty brilliant, eh? Oh, and for any of my critter-loving, tofu-eating, non-fly-swatting cronies out in the audience: Relax there, Mahatma. It's just a joke. I’ve hugged my share of bunnies and still somehow manage to maintain a sense of humor. But just to eliminate any confusion:
No robins were harmed during the crafting of this poem.
…………………………………….
My dad wrote this poem long before I was born, in 1963 or 1964. So he was somewhat amazed to discover this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lXRHcLInnc&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Yes, that’s Elvis Presley, reading a remarkably similar poem he claims to have written, and this recording is from the early 1970's. So there are really only three logical explanations.
1) Elvis plagiarized my dad.
2) My dad and Elvis both read a similar poem and then forgot about it before each wrote his own.
3) Elvis and my dad have eerily similar sick and twisted minds.
My father and Elvis share many qualities (Dad can play the guitar, and although he does not regularly dine on fried ice cream, I’m sure he wouldn’t turn it down), but I think it stretches credulity to suggest that they each independently came up with this delightful poetic homage to justifiable avicide. Elvis must have gotten the idea from somewhere. If not from my dad, then from somewhere else. As stated, Dad wrote it no later than 1964. So I went searching for some reference to this poem appearing in print somewhere earlier than that.
I found this one:
As I awoke one morning when all sweet things are born,
a Robin perched upon my sill to hail the coming dawn.
It was fragile, young and gay and sweetly did it sing,
and thoughts of happiness and joy into my head did bring.
I listened softly to his song and paused beside my bed,
then gently closed the window and crushed it's f*cking head.
But there is no source given. Also, my dad’s is much better. And not only because he has enough balls to include that offensive letter "u."
Searching further, I found these two versions:
As i awoke one morning, when all good things are born
A robin perched on my window sill to welcome in the dawnHe was so small and fragile and sweetly he did sing
Of thoughts of joy and happiness in my heart did spring
I smiled to myself as i stood beside my bed
And slowly brought the window down and smashed it on his head.........
I woke early one morning,
The earth lay cool and still
When suddenly a tiny bird
Perched on my window sill,
He sang a song so lovely
So carefree and so gay,
That slowly all my troubles
Began to slip away.
He sang of far off places
of laughter and of fun,
It seemed his very trilling,
brought up the morning sun.
I stirred beneath the covers
Crept slowly out of bed,
Then gently shut the window
And crushed his little head
But again, there was no reference supplied as to who allegedly wrote it and when.
And all the sensitive souls out there who wince every time the robin gets smashed: maybe you should just sit this blog out. It doesn’t get any better.
Back to variants on this cruel/hilarious poem. Here are two more:
As I awoke one morning, when all sweet things are born,
A robin perched upon my sill to welcome the coming morn.
He whistled a song so sweetly, and so softly did he sing,
That thoughts of joy and happiness to my heart did he bring.
As he cocked his little head, and paused for a moments lull,
I quickly closed the window, and crushed his fucking skull.
A songbird came and perched itself
upon my window sill.
It sang to me a song so sweet
in a soft little trill.
I thought to myself, how wonderful
this world of ours must be,
if God could send this little bird
to sing its' song for me.
A world of peace, a world of love,
of beauty and of joy.
A happy little haven
for every girl and boy.
And as I bent down to listen to
his gentle little lull,
I quickly slammed the window down
and crushed its' fucking skull!
Which, once again, is not as good as my Dad’s version, and is not attributed to any pre-1964 source.
The more I searched, the more versions of this I found. Here’s another:
As I awoke one morning
when all good things are born
A blackbird perched upon my sill
to hail the happy dawn
The robin sang so sweetly
as I crept out from my bed
And bought the bloody window down
and bashed his noisy head
Not only is this version shorter, later, and not nearly as good as Dad’s, it also inexplicably brings a blackbird into the poem at the beginning, only to smash a robin by the end of it.
Oh but the variants, they keep a coming:
Which at least adds the twist of a Scottish dialect to it, which is all one needs to suspect that maybe Robert Burns wrote it, which would place the poem well before 1964, in fact somewhere squarely in the 18th century. This would tie things up neatly if it were true, but it’s not.
Returning to Elvis’s version: it sold at an auction for thousands of dollars a few years ago. The hubbub surrounding the auction has shed a little light on the search for the original source, but not much. You couldn’t read by it, for example, but it would probably keep you awake at night.
According to one site: "Long before Elvis stumbled upon the ODE TO A ROBIN I saw it in Playboy magazine.” – attributed to John Wilkinson, a guitarist who played with Elvis for many years.
So I looked for any further references to the poem having been printed in Playboy, and found nothing. So while I am satisfied that Elvis definitely did not write it, I’m still not convinced that Playboy didn’t plagiarize my dad. But of course it's possible that both of them read it in Playboy or somewhere else, and subconsciously appropriated it for their own work. I figure they are both in good company. If a great man like my dad can do that, then I'm not going to fault Elvis for doing the same thing. Or vice versa.
Happy Father's Day! (1 day late)
(And for the record: be kind to animals. Don't crush them.)
3 comments:
Nice article bro. I'd like to think Elvis stole it from Dad :-)
Um...that's a very old poem that's been going the rounds for centuries.
I suspected that logical possibility number two: "My dad and Elvis both read a similar poem and then forgot about it before each wrote his own." was the actual case, in spite of my desire to believe that logical possibility number one was the case.
My searches revealed no references to the poem or similar poem from before the 20th century. The earliest reference appeared to be the one in which the guitarist said Elvis read it in Playboy, presumably some time in the late 1950s. It could certainly be older, but that's the earliest specific reference I found.
If anyone has specific earlier references, that would be immensely interesting and appreciated. Cheers.
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