Now there are none left, none who commanded the stage.
Kennedy, Khrushchev and Fidel; history has turned the page.
Revolution ran hot in his blood, and for that his countrymen paid.

Cuba was once a prosperous land, rich earth and a favorable clime.
The mob was entrenched in Havana hotels and singers performed for their dime.
Resentment and envy in the hearts of the poor convinced young Fidel it was time.

In Cuba today their cars all can do sixty, years I mean, not MPG.
Physicians and nurses all earn less than cabbies, what use is a college degree?
The poor are still poor; they just have a new master. Only now they are even less free.

Fidel was a man with a secular faith; in fact was a prophet of gloom.
We plotted to **** him with exploding cigars but the dammed things failed to go “boom”
I still can remember tense days one October and the sense of impending doom.

Socialism is great- until the money runs out, as old Maggie Thatcher opined.
When Russia collapsed, Cuba imploded, and Che has been dead a long time.
Today Fidel burns, perhaps some will mourn; others will think it Divine.

After all the crowds had gone, we came to the Rotunda where
Our murdered President lay in state, resting in his coffin there.
We shuffled in with our winds and woods to play a requiem for him.
Leonard Bernstein, with his grey tousled mane, motioned that we should begin.
Our fingers danced upon the strings as wood winds sounded sad and low.
In Life he loved to hear us play and we had loved him too you know.
Notes flowed in the November air, up to heaven for all we know,
Music taking the place of prayer; for many of us its long been so..
We’ve played before Thousands in New York and in concert halls around the world,
But this night we played just for him,

for Massachusetts favorite son.

We played Mahler’s requiem

for an audience of one.

My hands are spotted, marked with age.
I feel the cold more keenly now.
I have seen some good friends pass.
I’ve lost at love but kept my vow.
I’ve seen beloved parents’ dead
and held their bodies in my arms.
I’ve watched as youth and beauty fled
from the mirror before my eyes.
Yet through it all I’ve no regrets,
No thoughts that it’s been wasted time.
Hearts will break but they will mend.
Those hearts that don’t are most unkind.
Those who do have had good teachers
Though never one as good as mine.

My grandfather never lived to see Bryant and Rizzo play.
The Cubs won last back in 0- eight which was before his day.
His lifelong love of baseball he passed on down to me    
I took up his forlorn cause as mine each time I watched them play.      
For sixty seven summers    I have watched Cubs come and go;
seen good team fade in summer’s heat, adding to our goat- cursed woe.
I’ve seen them jinxed by black cats in the summer of sixty nine.
Watched Bartman wreck our changes;, what will it be this time?
Now they looked nearly down and out; shut out by the Tribes’ fine Corps
But they got up off the canvas and began to hit and score.
The Series now was tied at three, could my heroes count to four?
Our manager’s moves were questionable; I don’t care what you say.
He shouldn’t have taken Hendricks out (and let Baez swing away)
I sat through anxious innings and through the rain delay.
That’s when this old agnostic got down on his knees to pray.
They won it Eight to seven, Bryant made the final play.
My heart is filled with a nameless joy as Someday is today!

He rides his black steed through the countryside
and whenever he stops a mortal man dies.
He’s the Angel of Death and worthy of dread;
dressed all in black and lacking a head.
In his left hand is a spine that he’ll use as a whip.
In his right hand a scythe that will cut to the quick.
If you chance to observe him you may be struck blind
and still think yourself lucky that he left you behind.
If he pulls on the reins and he finds you outdoors
Your heart will stop dead and will beat nevermore.
There are buckets of blood where the Dullahan rides.
On all Hallows Eve you had best be inside.

It is, for some, a brief vacation from the world of work for pay.
For a child awaiting Christmas it seems an eternity.
For a patient sent to hospice, their prognosis being bleak,
The sum of their tomorrows may amount to just one week.

For them there will be opiates to help manage their pain
All chemotherapy will  stop, for it has been in vain.
Like vandals bent on pillage, Cancer cells their havoc wreak.
Fear yields now to acceptance in the sure knowledge of defeat.

We all face this same sentence, this same curtain call awaits;
though some may drift off during  sleep, which seems a kinder fate.
Appreciate the time you have and give each day its due.
We once had all the world and time but now our days are few.

They briefly loved who sheltered here; the beautiful Sarah and her cousin Will.
They fled the City to this place in England’s north wild rolling hills.
Her husband had neglected her, visiting stables and not her bed.
By that wild summer of Sixty- eight their estrangement had come to a head.
To this old country house she fled; to linger in her Lover’s arms.
Their close sanguinity proved no bar; she gladly yielded to his charms.
They summered here and oft were seen, together, on the Lover’s walk.
A place where blackthorn trees entwine; but you know how people love to talk.
He left her then, alone, with child, as coloured leaves began to fall.
Divorced, disgraced, abandoned thus; She sheltered in another’s home.
This famous beauty with Stuart blood there would raise her child alone.

Such is the history of this place; their romance played out in these halls.
Their scandalous adultery was consummated within these walls.
Modern beauties visit still and stroll with beaus the Lover’s walk-
A place where blackthorn trees entwine and old ghosts whisper in the dark.