Here's the deal, as best I can remember it,
Best I can defend it. The first time I heard
Warren I was a hopelessly marginal, liminal,
Disabled scholarship boy at an evangelical
Boarding school where wealth in God's name
Was the primary currency and piety close
Secondary. I couldn't tell you even now
Whether he was really any good or not, but
When he sang oddities like "Excitable Boy"
Or "Werewolves of London," I felt him telling
Truths about the comic sickness only he
And listeners like me could see. I forgot
About him mostly in the decades following,
But when I read that he was dying, I bought
His last recordings as if they might comfort
Me. Quarter-century on, it was his cover
Songs more interested me. I could not,
Cannot yet let go of the sentimentality
Coming over me when playing his reedy
Dying voice singing darkness coming
Down on me. On him, on me, empty, empty.
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