Sunday 23 September 2012

The Beatles in Elk Horn



Two years on from news clips of Russian missiles
heading for Castro’s Cuba before getting to me,
the Beatles’ She Loves You invaded Elk Horn’s
homes like subversive messages from Khrushchev
on our deluxe black and white TVs.

It’s 1964 and our small-town school still drilled us in
air-raid practices under wooden desks with a terrified
face between the knees and time for alternative dreams:
nuclear death, or English haircuts to shake on
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah and drive all the girls to screams.

We watched them on Ed’s all-American Show
altered in the suggestions of such change.
In the moments beyond that need to listen
it was absorbing the same instant of shock that
hit when Clay stole the history of Liston.

How they still startled in clean-cut suits and ties –
harmonies as pure as Country and Western or a hymn.
It was an Iowa revolution from afar
and airwaves would whirl like a Midwestern tornado
to change our landscapes from there and within.



3 comments:

  1. I loved this when I first read it in your collection and still love it now. Vivid, evocative and thought-provoking. I can picture the wide-eyed ten-year old so easily...

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  2. Thank you. Have slightly revised for possible publication in new book of poems about the Beatles.

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