Darkness At The Break Of Noon Poem by gershon hepner

Darkness at the break of noon
means the sun has been forsaken,
and seasons that had felt like June
have been by winter overtaken.
When from thought-dreams you awake
and the darkness hasn’t gone,
consciousness provides no break,
remembering, like Babylon,
the better times when darkness used
to pass soon after dawn’s first light,
before it seemed to be seduced
by demons dedicating night.
Now waxing waterfalls of pity
fall in the silence of the dark,
redundant in the somber city
as limousines no man can park,
driven without destination
by chauffeurs who cruise around
without a goal, for affirmation
that they still live upon the ground.

Inspired by Bob Dylan’s “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleedin) , ” one of many Dylan songs in a movie by D. A. Pennebaker, “65 Revisited”. Manohla Dargis writes (“Back to ‘Don’t Look Back, ” This Time With Dylan’s Songs in the Spotlight, ” NYT, November 27,2007) :
The great relief of D. A. Pennebaker’s “65 Revisited” — which pulls together never-released footage shot for his documentary “Don’t Look Back” — is that this time you can hear the songs in their entirety. Because Mr. Pennebaker wanted “Don’t Look Back” to be about Bob Dylan, not his 1965 British concert tour, he made the somewhat maddening decision to cut down the songs in that first film to tantalizing bits and pieces. The problem of course being that the songs were as much a part of this youthquaking sensation as his pipe-cleaner-skinny legs, his fuzzy ’fro, bobbing head, sly smile, riffs, rants, puns and playful, otherworldly genius. “65 Revisited” restores some of the abridged and omitted pleasures with onstage performances (“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue, ” “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) , ” “It Ain’t Me, Babe”) , green-room idling (“It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry”) and a duet with Joan Baez (“Laddie”) , who always seems to be warbling or smiling at some intensely private joke. One of the film’s most suggestive scenes finds Ms. Baez asking Mr. Dylan if he can “concentrate” long enough to help her with some songs. Mr. Pennebaker, a founding figure in the direct-cinema movement, never comments on his material, so you’re left to wonder what in the world all that was about. (He never even tells you that the singers were lovers.) A fast 65 minutes, “65 Revisited” is best appreciated as an extension of “Don’t Look Back, ” a kind of cinematic footnote. (Both are included in the DVD box edition of “Don’t Look Back” released in February.) Some of the same players appear in both documentaries, including the tour manager, Bob Neuwirth, and Mr. Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, who enlisted Mr. Pennebaker to make the first film and served as one of its producers.


11/27/07