Side Streets from Gabriel Kahane by Gabriel Kahane

The porches on the side streets all remind him of those nights: a sky, black sky. Chased off the roofs of fancy hotels, where they gave fake names, ghost names. Then they’d slink back to bars for drink and reverie and they’d sing, how they’d sing,

“Oh it’s been a long time such a very long time
oh it’s been a long time such a very long time.”

He dares himself to walk down to the cemetery walls alone. There in the graveyard are granite stones bearing broken names, ghost names, and a cheap cross that’s wrapped in plastic, stopping the rain that falls— how it falls!

“Oh it’s been a long time such a very long time oh it’s been a long time such a very long time.”

He spent the night in the shade of lindens rotten underground, but soft. And though he scares himself bad he stays until the first morning light.

***

The long walk home in the dead of dawn; no breeze, cloudless sky. There by the door he sees some children dancing in the street for joy, and he smiles. And they’d sing, how they’d sing.

“Oh it’s been a long time such a very long time oh it’s been a long time such a very long time.”

And now it’s gone away.
The thinking keeps him up all through the night. He writes it down: a song, ghost song.

• Acoustic
• Alternative
• Folk
• classical
• Portland