The Drifter
She was only a whore
in a place that I score
yet she looked like an angel to me
I guess I was stoned
Yet I knew when she phoned
That something had happened to me
Maybe its fate
and its never too late
To ask for a miracle girl
I felt that she
Was meant for me
Who else in this crazy old whirl?
The dawn was late
As I tried to wait
For a sign but the oracle lied
I wondered then
'bout the cool of Zen
And the only way she sighed
Is it always this
and the distant kiss
Of a dream that never can be
As the huskies howl
And the wolves they prowl
I cry in the blizzard of me
(After Robert Service)
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Donovan writes: My silver - tongued father
Donald chanted Robert Service to me, a child in war torn Glasgow,
when the nights were howling. Visions of the Yukon and the
frozen miners out there in the wilderness. The shapes of Service
poems come to me now and again in my own writing and ‘The
Drifter‘ is one. I told my father once that Service
carried a guitar with him on his travels, father didn’t
believe me.The poet did, around the campfire with the harmonica,
that would have been the poormans’ balm, in those wild
camps of lonely men.
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