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Robert Lindner
I was reading the notes on our younger days
And comparisons to our children and grandchildren's
Times and I thought of some songs with that theme
And came up with the musical CHICAGO and
Cole Porter's glympses of stocking and authors
With four letter words. My four letter words
Are Time, Life and Love.
Robert Lindner
A Memory of Younger Days
“In olden days, a glimpse of stocking
Was looked upon as something shocking.
Now God knows, anything goes!
Good authors, too, who once knew better words,
Now only use four letter words,
Writing prose. Anything goes!”
Anything Goes by Cole Porter
And that's Good, isn't it? Grand, isn't it? Great, isn't it?
Swell, isn't it? Fun, isn't it? But nothing stays.
In fifty years or so. It's gonna change, you know,
But, oh, it's heaven. Nowadays
Nowadays from Chicago, the musical
In younger days, when years
Went faster, a small disaster brought tears.
But they were brief and we
Got through, since we’d not be
Too serious, mostly.
And would be playing board games, like Careers
Or Monopoly or
Games in the park that required us to score
Runs or run for touchdowns.
And some of us were clowns,
Some with smiles, some with frowns.
That’s all before we found what was in store
For us. But we could not
Think that far ahead. Therefore, what we got
Was what we were going
To get. But now, knowing
What the world was showing
Us, we must wonder why we couldn’t spot
The signs trying to show
Us the way to better roads, we now know
Were always there, if we
Had looked more carefully.
But that seems meant to be,
Since we were who we were and so we’d go
Where we are now. But please,
Let’s recall the past with fond memories,
Since we can’t change what was,
Go back and fix the flaws
In our choices because
Time’s passed. And olden days are just stories,
Once hidden by desires
That sometimes were pumped up like bicycle tires
For the bike, that I’d ride
To parks that I’d decide
Were a bit far outside
That distance youthful energy requires
For a walk to the park.
But there were parks nearby, where, in the dark,
We’d play hide and seek, though
We called it, “ditch.” We’d go
Into dark alleys to show
We had no fear and wished to make our mark
In the time we were in.
The time, now long past, when, if we could win
The games, we played, that was
Of importance because
If we lost, then with claws
Out, the teasing of our flaws would begin,
With no apparent end.
But that was in younger days. Days we’d spend
Having fun, mostly.
Now they’re just memory
Chosen selectively,
For good times rather than times that offend
Us with those teasing ways
That are happily lost in olden days,
That are just memory.
Now time moves more slowly,
And we forget what we
Have forgotten, though some memory stays
And seems like Heaven, more
Nowadays, after the fifty years or
So since in Chicago
We found our way, you know,
In fast years, now turned slow,
Though “Anything Goes,” unlike times before,
When a boy, that was shy,
Played his games and rode his bike and would try
To understand who he
Was and who he would be.
That’s just a memory
Of younger days that makes those times in my
Life go by. But now I’m
Here, remembering, going into time
To olden nowadays
With the songs that can raise
The younger days of plays
And musicals to the power of rhyme.
Now that’s my memory
Of days that were the younger days for me
But olden days long done
In history, part one
For this son of the sun
And the earth, who imagined he would be
A lucky boy, since he
Had survived a history that would be
Called miraculous when
There were songs of olden
Days that were not heaven,
Though many went there into memory.
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