John Prine - Hello In There (Live From Sessions at West 54th)

Me and Loretta, we don't talk much now
She sits and stares through the backdoor screen
And all the news just repeats itself
Like some forgotten dream that we've both seen
(John Prine, from the lyrics of Hello In There)

This song has a story for me. I came to know it when I bought Diamonds & Rust by Joan Baez around 1975, the year it was released. Hello In There instantly struck me as one of the best songs on the album and made me aware of its composer, John Prine. As a result, I started listening to Prine and bought several of his albums.

Old Welsh Song

I take with me where I go a pen and a golden bowl;
Poet and beggar step in my shoes, or a prince in a purple shawl.
I bring with me when I return to the house that my father's hands made
A crooning bird on a crystal bough and, o, a sad, sad word!

– Henry Treece

Recited by Joan Baez on her 1968 album Baptism.

Henry Treece/Joan Baez trivia
Baptism includes a total of four poems by Treece (1911-1966). In addition to "Old Welsh Song," these are "Who Murdered the Minutes," "Oh, Little Child" and "The Magic Wood." J.B. must have really liked this guy's poems.

Out of the window, sharply

I've been sitting here on Sunday morning editing tags.
What a thing to do on Sunday morning, without even having had breakfast.

When I caught myself at this (after approx. 20 min of it),
I, for some reason, remembered through the past darkly,*

and that it was probably a wise idea to situate myself
in the world I live in consciously,

by looking out the window sharply. The world is out there
all right, it consists of thinly white clouds and baby-blue sky,

of quiet houses, grey walls, red roofs and spiky antennae.
Not a whisp of smoke out any chimney. Has it all died on me?

Now don't get rhetorical, I admonish myself. If it were dead,
my dear, you'd know first hand, because you'd be dead yourself.

– Len B.

* Apparently a song by the Rolling Stones. I'd thought it was the title of a poem by Henry Treece, recited by Joan Baez. Will have to verify. The world-so-wide web has failed, I'll have to revert to my empirical means.

Will let you know the results soon, like in about 5 minutes. This is, once again, blogging on the razor edge of time.

I'm back!

• Empirical means have failed. That Joan Baez record is not among the ones I have in my living room. Probably in the basement, where some of her stuff has been banned. My first record ever was Joan Baez' "The first ten years." Living in the country with no access to music stores, I'd mail-ordered it. Anxiously checking the mail for it every day for weeks. It took an awful long time to arrive. That was in 1970. I was 14.
  
• The poem by Henry Treece I remembered is called "Old Welsh Song" (I'll post it soon).
• I may have possibly and wrongly been thinking of García Lorca's "Gacela of the dark death", which Joan B. also recited on the same record. (To be posted as well; this is turning into a thread.)
  
• I'll have to listen to that Rolling Stones number.

Back again, some 10 minutes later:

• Riddle solved. The Joan Baez album is called "Baptism," and the piece on it I'd actually been thinking about was "Of the dark past" by James Joyce. There you go.
  

Oh the tricks that memory and association can play...