CONCERNING DANNY DEEVER

Do you know Kipling’s poem about hanging Danny Deever?

It’s in the form of a dialogue between Files-On-Parade

And the Colour-Sergeant. My father used to sing it

When he was putting me to bed. This was a lengthy process

Involving a book being read, perhaps two, a story --

Which my father would invent – and some songs.

Occasionally, bits of poetry would sneak in;

Someone must have told him, correctly,

That Macbeth soliloquizing about the futility of life

Might be just the thing to make a three year old sleep sound.

My father was the youngest of nine children which meant

He had four living and one dead older sister

And two living and one dead older brother. The dead brother

Was named Moshe and was called Morris and remained

After he died one of my father’s favorite relatives.

The dead sister, Edith, left almost nothing behind

But her name. Recently, though, she has been insisting

That she would have been tall – for her family, at least  --

And witty and  a talented amateur artist who wore

Extraordinary hats every chance she got if only

She had lived more than a few months.

By now, you may have given up hope of hearing

More about Danny Deever. It may even be

That you never began reading this poem at all

And are quietly pleased with yourself. The question

I want to discuss today is who it was who taught my father

(Nathan was his name, called Nate or Natie by his family

But never by my mother) the words and the tune?

Had I asked he might have remembered that Sadie

Or Doris had memorized it for some class and he,

With his preposterously good memory for such things,

Had picked it up when whichever of them read it aloud

To fix it in memory. Not Anne (the pretty sister) I think,

Nor lefthanded Rose, nor Harry (the family rebel).

Certainly not Joe.

I believe I will choose

To believe that my grandmother – who learned English’

From her children’s school textbooks -- was entranced

By the cadence and the drama and would say bits of it

When she was awake at 3 in the morning when everyone else

Except my father was sleeping. The tune he may have found

Years later, left in the street by some careless passerby.