The Valley Below
A song written by Paul Hall at a café outside of Gare De L'Est (Train Station of the East), Paris, in 1980.
I remember, it was early spring and I had recently arrived in Paris this time from a brief sojourn in Spain, where I sang in the streets of the city from whence Columbus had once set sail on his first trip to what he imagined to be Asia, but in fact was the rim of that meteor crater just offshore from the continents of the Western Hemisphere. That city from which he sailed and where I sang my poetry set to music in the streets was Huelva in Andelucea.
Upon returning to Paris, and writing the poem "The Time Bends in the Distance" on the way, I and some friends discovered a camp ground in the outskirts, called in French the "banlieu", based out of our nylon bivouac to do as we had done before, sing on subway trains, called in French "les rammes de metro".
I had met my old friend, Murry, who had shown me the way to do metro singing, at the beginning of the year, having completed a trip around the entire world, raising the funds in Paris, taking the metro to the airport, Charles de Gaulle airport (which I called "Show to Go"), and then heading off to Fiji, where I sang in Suva (which I called "committing suvaside"), then having to land in Samoa after being kicked out of Fiji by immigrations, and having returned to France to get the finances to continue in Samoa, returning to Samoa, then having to leave there, selling an underground newspaper I wrote in the US that summer (traveling fifty thousand miles in the US on the dog (The Greyhound Bus using Ameripass), then landing once more in Paris just before new years of 1980.
By then I had perfected a bit more the art of metro singing which I called "playing the spaghetti". I majored on the Pont de Sevres Glingencourt line, line number nine, which I called "the number nine mine", but, like Tarzan swinging on vines, for variety I'd switch lines all the time, as though the metro lines were like a big bowl of spaghetti. But whereas the others would quit singing when the subways got too crowded at rush hour, I learned to use a five zone orange card to sing the outskirts and simply go farther from the center of town. The farther you got the more it thinned out and then it could be business as usual.
I used the technique to go twice around the world to the Pacific Islands like Paul Gaughin before me, only I was Paul Goagain. Anyway, I found, like the wise farmer, one had to allow the field at times to go fallow. So I sang in my best spots in the outskirts only once a week at the most. One day I went out of train station St. Lazar (the Laz), the next, Mont Parnasse, Gar de Nord (Noah's Ark), Gare de L'Est (happy Easter) and so on. Gare de L'Est was the worst.
The day I wrote this poem, I had just wasted an evening's rush hour at Gare de L'Est, and made practically nothing (however later I did catch up a bit on the train to the camp ground at Joinville). But, after I finished singing at Gare de L'Est, I went to the café across the street got an espresso and sat down to write this poem later put to music.
I usually wrote in the morning whenever I did (occasionally), which I used to call my breakfast: "...un stilo de bic et un double express", which means, a double espresso and a bic pen. Though they say that the pen is mightier than the sword, I say that the pen is mightier than the insula.
(c) 1987.
The leaves in the wind
mixed with songs of the birds
and the glow of the warmth
of the sun on the trees
speak the words
I would know
but the shades
pass so slow,
and at sunset
they wither
in the valley below.
In the valley below,
the valley below,
shades pass at sunset
like vapors so slow.
Like thousands of faces
from crushed calcare cliffs
of a great concrete scrap-heap.
Tell me, where do they go,
If you might know, sir,
in the valley below?
In the late afternoon
I have learned
by the side
of the fountains of waters
as by me they would glide.
And the sun sets so slow.
And beyond, in the glow
of the blue and the red
there's a lily white moon
and a neighboring planet
hanging high overhead.
In the valley below,
the valley below,
shades pass at sunset
like vapors so slow.
Like thousands of faces
from crushed calcare cliffs
of a great concrete scrap-heap.
Tell me, where do they go,
If you might know, sir,
in the valley below?
Good times seem so brief.
On the streets
I must meet
with hundreds of faces
from non-descript places
built of calcium crushed
from some cliff
in the brush.
The grief
of their paces
asks me so slow,
"Where do we come from
and where do we go?"
In the valley below,
the valley below,
shades pass at sunset
like vapors so slow.
Like thousands of faces
from crushed calcare cliffs
of a great concrete scrap-heap.
Tell me, where do they go,
If you might know, sir,
in the valley below?
And I sing them my song
beside the old railroad track.
I said, "I'll ask one
who's been there
and then
has come back.
He said,
"The people are running.
They are tired.
They are scared.
They go to
the scrap-heap
except they're repaired."
In the valley below,
the valley below,
shades pass at sunset
like vapors so slow.
Like thousands of faces
from crushed calcare cliffs
of a great concrete scrap-heap.
and that's where you will go
unless you're repaired quick
in the valley.
The valley below.
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Paul A. L. Hall
Copyright © 2003 [Paul Hall]. All rights reserved.
email: poetry@paulhallart.com