GOODBYE VERSION II

I offer no apologies for posting "Goodbye" again as it's one of my alltime favorites. It featured in the Flight Plan of August 28 but I know we've welcomed a lot of new visitors to ASPTL since then, so here it is again for those newcomers as well as those of you who perhaps missed it first time around.

This is a slightly extended version and is taken from the South African Concert Collection. Compare the two and pick your favorite.

                                       - Ken, Johannesburg, November 22.

GOODBYE

Once you said we have nothing to laugh at together, meanwhile you laugh at me enough for both of us. You clean me out of kindness... slowly, till there's little left. The difference in us, I suppose, is that if I have to, I'll change for you, I'm willing. But I want you only as you are. If I don't agree with you or question you at all, I need help. If I do agree then I have no opinion of my own.

What happened between New York and London? Did you go off to meet the Wizard again? And this time was it harder letting go? Or did he make some magic for you that negated everything we started working for, reaching for?

I never expected the Wiz to be out the window from the start of our togetherness, but why fly all the way to London to tell me, and show me, my inadequacies?

I said we'd never say Goodbye. Today... the word comes easy and without effort. Maybe that's because I don't have to say it face to face. We're at either ends of telephone lines again. Correction... we're there when I call. There is no reason to believe you'll call tonight after not keeping last night's promise. If you did, I don't know what we'd talk about. I only know... the conversation... however hard or easy, would end with one final Goodbye. The word... used with relief by you... regret by me. But final !

I love you still. As much, and as love goes, even more than that first half-drunk night you concentrated so hard on pleasing me... and did. I love you. I'm not afraid to say it. Even after all the mean and misery that's passed between us. Apologies are not enough, I know. How could they compensate for rides across the oceans done in tears and not in laughter. How could they make up for Saturday soldiers battling one the other. Wounding words spit out machine gun like. How could they make up for two people, desperately in need of one the other, not making up.

But I apologize. For leading you to London and not letting you love me in your own way - at arms length. For rushing you, not stopping once to read your needs. Thinking I'd fulfilled them each time that you filled mine. For intimidation... if that's what it was. For being timid and unsure, pretending I was strong when my strength only came from you. For making you think every night in bed was one more potential crisis. It never was... it never was anything but the very best. Even when I knew you forced yourself to bring yourself to me. I never felt anything but happiness and honor. Joy in letting go.

No one else has yet come close to giving me that feeling.

Goodbye... I love you. And I'll go on loving. I will change as you will change. I wish you Christmas every time your eyes close. I pray that you will run with deer and soar with eagles, touching only on the ground long enough to find that man who will love you every bit as much as I do. And one you'll feel the same toward.

It is still early in the day for each of us despite the darkness up ahead. I know that there will be someone to lead you through the dark and someone you can lead. That it wasn't me is something I can live with. I only hope while you were adding to my life... I haven't interrupted anything within yours.

                          - From Coming Close to the Earth, 1977, 1978                   

A NEW LIST OF SAINTS FOR THE CHURCH OF ROME

                                - from In Someone’s Shadow, 1969