Somewhere a Band is Playing

[thisisthesmile.livejournal.com]

Somewhere a Band is Playing
-Ray Bradbury

Somewhere a band is playing,
Playing the strangest tunes,
Of sunflower seeds and sailors
Who tide with the strangest moons.
Somewhere a drummer simmers
And trembles with times forlorn
Remembering days of summer
In Futures yet unborn.
Futures so far they are ancient
And filled with Egyptian dust,
That smell of the tomb and the lilac,
And seed that is spent from lust,
And peach that is hung on a tree-branch
Far out in the sky from one’s reach,
There mummies as lovely as lobsters
Remember old Futures and teach.
And children sit by on the stone floor
And draw out their lives in the sands,
Remembering deaths that won’t happen
In Futures unseen in far lands.
Somewhere a band is playing
Where the moon never sets in the sky
And nobody sleeps in the summer
And nobody puts down to die;
And Time then just goes on forever
And hearts then continue to beat
To the sound of the old moon-drum drumming
And the glide of Eternity’s feet;
Where beauty is beauty eternal
And life is warm blood under skin
And fresh is the rose with life vernal
Which never knows darkness and sin.
Somewhere the memory lingers,
Somewhere the gods know death,
But birth themselves new with sweet hungers
To slake in the brook-morning's breath.
Somewhere the old people wander
And linger themselves into noon
And sleep in the wheat fields yonder
To rise as fresh children with moon.
Somewhere the children, old, maunder
And know what it is to be dead
And turn in their weeping to ponder
Oblivions filed ‘neath their bed.
Somewhere the in-between people
Walk center-lines down summer street
And gaze in the crazed-mirror faces
Of opposite people they meet.
Two races pass roundabout now
With the in-between people trapped there,
To houses of faith or of doubt now
Turned weathers both stormy and fair,
And sit at the long dining table
Where Life makes a banquet of flesh,
Where dis-able makes itself able
And spoiled puts on new masks of fresh.
Somewhere a band is playing
Oh listen, oh listen, that tune!
If you learn it you'll dance on forever
In June...
and yet June...
and more...June...
And Death will be dumb and not clever
And Death will lie silent forever
In June and yet June and more June.