{"sf1_id":null,"sf2_id":"k1V9BAWn","title":"To the Last Memory of John and Syd","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":2654,"posted_at":"2025-04-19T19:21:54.000Z","tags":["M/M","Poem","ballad","crimes","gay","lyric"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/k1V9BAWn-to-the-last-memory-of-john-and-syd","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/k1V9BAWn","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/2a/a3/2aa31c4f-c38a-494b-a128-775c7517b892","description":"I've wanted to do something with the form from Wilde's \"Ballad of Reading Gaol\" for a long time. The nice thing about this form is how much repeated and rephrased lines pay off in it, and it makes spondees pay off so well.  \nI guess this is set on the great plains, probably during the depression. I don't think being any more specific about time and place helps, though.  \nI don't feel like I quite captured the kind of tragic, bittersweet, Born To Run hope that I was picturing, but I hope I got at least some of it.  \n---  \nBy reading this online version, you confirm you are not associated with OpenAI or any other AI project, that you are not procuring information for the OpenAI corpus or any other machine learning database, that you are not associated with the ChatGPT project or a user of the ChatGPT project or any other AI, machine learning, or algorithmic database focused on producing fictional content for dissemination.","content":"Dearly beloved, we gather here,\n\nWhere gatherings are forbid,\n\nThough never a grave will either have,\n\nNor coffin, nay, nor lid,\n\nTo drink, at least, the last memory\n\nTo John, and his Dear Friend Syd.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nJohn was a terror and reprobate\n\nWho blew one day into town.\n\nHis eyes they glared as a beast’s would glare\n\nWhen your headlights stared it down,\n\nAnd we all of us said, that the likes of him\n\nOught not to hang around.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nBut Syd, I had known my life entire.\n\nHe lived next door but three\n\nIn the early days of innocence,\n\nWhen we innocent were, and free.\n\nThough I would prove the more innocent,\n\nAnd he more free than me.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nTogether endured we days of school.\n\nTogether were we released\n\nWhen cicadas spoke in the tangled oaks\n\nAnd summer’s heat increased.\n\nTogether our bare feet knew the town\n\nFrom Route Eight to Second East.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nTogether we’d go to the loon-loud lake\n\nWhen the afternoons grew dry.\n\nTogether we’d hike to trestle bridge\n\nWhen the 6:10 thundered by,\n\nAnd never I noticed his hungry look\n\nThat would follow it, and sigh.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nBut those were the days when the world was young.\n\nYoung we may be no more.\n\nThis is a story too heavy by half\n\nFor my inept metaphor,\n\nSo I give you his: the past is a cage\n\nAnd time is a closing door.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nTime is the door that shuts on us.\n\nThey tell me it shut on them.\n\nAnd gone are the days when we could be boys,\n\nNow we are only men.\n\nBut the story will get there soon, too soon.\n\nLet me begin again.\n\nSyd grew into a lonely man.\n\nNobody thought much of that.\n\nFor this is a town of lonely folk\n\nIn a lonely habitat.\n\nAnd at least our days were prosperous:\n\nAs prosperous as they were flat.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nBut John blew into town one day,\n\nPerhaps on a midnight train.\n\nPerhaps when a midnight bus broke down\n\nAnd left no choice but to remain.\n\nPerhaps on a distant thunder roll\n\nAnd the far-off smell of rain.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nJohn blew into town, just like\n\nAn afternoon cyclone would,\n\nThat rattles the latch of the cellar door\n\nWhere you shelter—as you should—\n\nBut even a wind so ill as that\n\nBlew one man, at least, some good.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nFor when John blew into town, he found\n\nBut little welcome, and cold.\n\nMost of the town were unfriendly folk.\n\nAnd most of the town were old.\n\nIf lonely, yet they were prosperous:\n\nThey had, and they meant to hold.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nI do not know how they came to meet.\n\nI do not know what they said.\n\nI know that Syd was the giving sort.\n\nI know that John needed a bed.\n\nSo rather than alley or overpass,\n\nJohn lived with Syd instead.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nSyd he worked as he’d ever worked,\n\nDiligent, dull, and hard.\n\nJohn, he would do the odd odd-job\n\nAt the mill or the lumberyard\n\nBut mostly he wandered the town and stared\n\nAt the taciturn folk on guard.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nA few words we’d exchange. There were\n\nBut few who would say a few.\n\nMost dared no more than a silent nod.\n\nMost kept their ‘how’re you?’\n\nAnd if townsfolk could be taciturn,\n\nJohn, he could be too.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nBut a few words we exchanged. I felt\n\nI owed that much to Syd.\n\nTogether he was with John, as once\n\nTogether we’d been as kids.\n\nBut little and less I learned of John\n\nNo matter what I did.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nI saw them, together, from time to time,\n\nOn the porch, when the summer sun\n\nWas low and red and saturated\n\nTill the clouds’ very colors run.\n\nAnd in every thing you could all but smell\n\nAn ending but just begun.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nBut together they lived, and I liked it not.\n\nIt was Jealousy, I suppose.\n\nBut John he lived, and Syd he lived,\n\nAs many have done, God knows.\n\nAnd whether they loved as well as lived\n\nIs not for me to disclose.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nCould they have been content with that?\n\nGod knows I could have been.\n\nA home and a life with one you love,\n\nGod, what more is there to win?\n\nBut I do not know if God knows if it\n\nWas love that they were in.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nCould they have been content with that:  \nFour walls, a roof, and a floor?\n\nPerhaps John was too much the reprobate.\n\nPerhaps Syd wanted more,\n\nAnd we remained only a lonely town,\n\nAnd time was a closing door.\n\nThe buds were tight on the maple boughs,\n\nThe mud still froze each night,\n\nWhen I noticed it’d been three days since I\n\nLast noticed their window light.\n\nAnd before I knew what the matter was\n\nI knew it was not all right.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nAnd before I knew what the matter was,\n\nAnd before I had dared to knock,\n\nI knew I’d hear no more answer from\n\nThat house than from solid rock.\n\nBut I didn’t expect the front door to be\n\nSo open, and so unlocked.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nI didn’t expect to find the place\n\nAs empty as orderly.\n\nWith not a speck out of place to show\n\nWhere John, where Syd might be.\n\nAs if their home were a cage, and they\n\nHad managed to wiggle free.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nI locked the door with the stray spare key\n\nSyd left on the kitchen floor.\n\nI spread the word to a couple friends.\n\nWhat could I have done more?\n\nThan to close the door on the empty house\n\nOn which time had closed the door.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nNobody heard a word from Syd,\n\nAnd certainly not from John.\n\nNobody had the first idea\n\nWhither they both had gone.\n\nBest to forget, we townsfolk said.\n\nBest just to move along.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nBest just to move along, and time\n\nHad moving along to do.\n\nAnd seasons passed as they always pass,\n\nTill half a year became two.\n\nAnd days when we thought of Syd and John,\n\nAs far as we knew, were through.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nSpring she passed, and summer he passed,\n\nAnd autumn brought usual news:\n\nA dust storm blown, a Wall Street crash,\n\nA senator’s son recused,\n\nAnd a broker robbed, three states away\n\nIn a town called New Syracuse.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nAnd a steamboat robbed, two states away\n\nAt a fork of the Missouri,\n\nAnd only a state away, a bank\n\nIn a town called Gethsemane,\n\nAnd if any but I had more than a guess\n\nThen never a word reached me.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nAutumn was nearly long enough\n\nThat I almost forgot again.\n\nIt’s hard to remember the world outside\n\nIn this town of lonely men.\n\nBut winter blew into town with Syd\n\nAnd John, who was His Dear Friend.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nThe money was piled on the pantry floor,\n\nThe guns on a kitchen chair.\n\nIn a house that was once next door but three\n\nAnd now was a bandit’s lair,\n\nAnd it took too long to find my voice\n\nOr do anything but stare.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nJohn stared at me as a beast would stare\n\nAt one lost in the wilderness.\n\nAnd aye, I feared for my life indeed,\n\nIt shames me to confess,\n\nBut John only turned to Syd and said,  \n“He came. You were right, I guess.”\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nSyd, he was suddenly once again\n\nWho I’d known my whole life through.\n\nAnd suddenly he was entirely tales\n\nOf the things he had dared to do\n\nThe brighter his face grew in telling them,\n\nThe brighter John’s face grew too.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nOh, the tales he dared to tell me then\n\nAnd swore me to never repeat,\n\nOf midnight flight to the county line,\n\nOf gunshots out in the street,\n\nOf ever another getaway,\n\nOf never a sole defeat.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nOh the sins he dared to confess to me\n\nWhich I repeat not at all, I swear.\n\nOh the terrible freedom of a world\n\nWhen you do whatever you dare\n\nIn the reprobate’s life that John had lived\n\nAnd Syd had longed to share.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nAnd oh the way John looked at him\n\nWith every tale Syd told,\n\nAs a weary man looks, at a crackling hearth,\n\nWho has just come in from the cold.\n\nI’d almost have said he cared nothing for\n\nStolen banker’s gold.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nI brought them some food, for the house had none.\n\nI made them a makeshift bed.\n\nAnd God knows the things I wished to say\n\nThough none of them I said.\n\nBut how many times could these many tales\n\nHave ended with one of them dead?\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\n“Whatever you’ve done,” I finally said\n\n“With whatever you’ve gotten away,\n\nWhat a relief to leave it behind,\n\nAnd have somewhere safe to stay.\n\nFor now you have riches secure enough\n\nTo last to your very last day.”\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\n“The riches are nothing,” Syd shook his head\n\n“I’ll stay here not one day more.\n\nAnd only the day that’s the final day\n\nMean I to I return” he swore.\n\n“For I tell you this: The past is a cage,\n\nAnd time is a closing door.”\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\n“But the money-”\n\n“The money was never the point,”\n\nSaid Syd, to his Dear Friend John.\n\n“Together we are, and together we’ll be,\n\nAnd together we’re moving on.”\n\nThey bade me goodnight and they sent me back me home.\n\nCome morning, they were gone.\n\nOh Dearly Beloved, would that I had known\n\nSome better way to implore\n\nTo give up this madness and come back home\n\nAnd rovering go no more.\n\nBut perhaps it was always too late, and Time\n\nHad already closed that door.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nMost of the money they left behind.\n\nI’ll tell you not where it went.\n\nSave only my mother in heaven taught\n\nThat money’s a sin, unspent,\n\nAnd never a worker in town, that year,\n\nNeeded worry to pay the rent.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nTwas barely a week ere the news came in.\n\nFrom a bank down in Ouachitee.\n\nCaution they’d thrown to the cyclone winds:\n\nFor every last one to see:\n\nThere on the front page news was John\n\nAnd his Dear Friend Syd’s crime spree.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nAgain they struck, a Duranzo bank.\n\nAgain they struck, in New Lodz.\n\nEvery time they escaped unscathed\n\nNever you mind the odds.\n\nPolice seemed all perfectly powerless\n\nTo halt their proud maraud.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nAgain they struck and again they struck.\n\nThe news was of naught but them.\n\nAnd harder and harder the newspapers tried\n\nTheir robberies to condemn,\n\nBut ever the readers fell more in love\n\nWith glorious mayhem.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nSome said they were a menace\n\nTo all of society,\n\nAccused them of communism\n\nAnd unnaturality.\n\nAs if those things were somehow worse\n\nThan simple bank robbery.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nBut others would call them heroes,\n\nIf they thought it was safe to speak:\n\nThose who were not so prosperous,\n\nThose were wearied and weak,\n\nSaid what was lost by the rich could be  \nInherited by the meek.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nSo when with admixtured triumph\n\nThey blew back into town,\n\nAnd Syd was friendly and frantic,\n\nHandshakes all around,\n\nAnd John hung back in silence\n\nAnd nothing would do but frown,\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nMost of us came to greet them.\n\nMost of us said hello.\n\nMost of us our ignorance\n\nTook plentiful pains to show:\n\nAnd if a bank somewhere’d been robbed,\n\nWhy how were we to know?\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nBut the oldest, loneliest, prosperous,\n\nThey shut their doors and blinds.\n\nThat never a welcome a man like John,\n\nLike Syd had become, should find.\n\nNeither one seemed to notice, though.\n\nNeither one seemed to mind.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\n“Surely now you are satisfied,”\n\nI begged, “and can now return.\n\n“Seldom a man on a path like yours\n\nGood name and good will can earn.\n\nA chance for peace and prosperity,\n\nNo outlaw ought to spurn.”\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nBut Syd just smiled. And the wonder was\n\nThat John he smiled as well\n\nAnd said “How fast Time's door'll close,\n\nWell, I dunno how to tell.\n\nWhen the high road slow, the swift road low\n\nBoth only lead to hell.”\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\n“It always was going to end that way,\n\nSo the end matters not at all.\n\nOnly the way we live till then.\n\nOnly how, not if, we fall.\n\nSo till Time shuts their door on me\n\nI live at Syd’s beck and call.”\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\n“My life was always to end this way\n\nSo till it is all gone by,\n\nI'll burn every fuckin’ second to light\n\nThe fire in Sydney's eye.”\n\nAnd if greater love man ever hath had,\n\nThen God may know. Not I.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nI gave them what help I had. God knows\n\nThat persuasion I had no more.\n\nBy morning they'd left, left not a speck\n\nOf evidence on the floor\n\nWhile the past was a cage shutting still too slow\u0026nbsp;\n\nAnd time a still-closing door.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nBut the oldest, loneliest, prosperous\u0026nbsp;\n\nLess merciful were than Time.\n\nIn our glorious criminal Icari\n\nThey nothing would see but crime,\n\nAnd maybe a shot at “recovered” gold,\n\nOf which they'd seen not a dime.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nSo the oldest, loneliest, prosperous\u0026nbsp;\n\nWith policemen one, two, three,\n\nDid set ablaze Syd’s empty house\n\nLest they innocent prove, or free.\n\nThe next three months I passed in fear\n\nLest next they should come for me.\n\nBy now, dear beloved, you’ve heard the news.\n\nWhy else would you gathered be?\n\nAnd it’s honored I am to say my piece\n\nTo Syd and John’s memory.\n\nSo remember, whatever the news may say,\n\nJohn and Syd are free.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nI know what the papers will claim to tell.\n\nI know what the preachers say.\n\nReprobates all are bound for hell,\n\nAnd these two are on their way.\n\nBut listen and let one more reprobate\n\nA little your fears allay.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nFor I was the last to speak to Syd,\n\nAssuming you don’t count John.\n\nSyd, he had known me his life entire,\n\nThough now, so they say, that’s gone.\n\nSo went I to warn them to lay down arms,\n\nFor an ambush was coming on.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nAnd I was the last to speak to John,\n\nExcepting of course for Syd.\n\nThough aye, they had done forbidden things\n\nBut friendship’s not yet forbid.\n\nI left the town, never mind you when.\n\nI followed where they were hid.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nI said, “They’ve called in federal men,\n\nGuns eager all to be drawn.\n\nThe federals will be coming soon,\n\nThey’ll arrive by the break of dawn.\n\nIf you but surrender quietly\n\nYou may yet survive this, John.”\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\n“Then I’ll to jail, and he’ll to jail\n\nSeparate, but alive?”\n\nSaid John, “but if we are separate,\n\nWhy should I want to survive?\n\nBetter to go down, beside him, when\n\nCops, death, and dawn arrive.”\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\n“If we have to run,” said Syd, “we run.\n\nIn concrete our course be set,\n\nAnd we’ll run it forever, wait and see.\n\nPromise you won’t forget\n\nHowever they lie, whatever they say:\n\nBelieve we are running yet.”\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nBefore the dawn had raised his voice\n\nThey’d made their last goodbye.\n\nThey vanished down an endless road\n\nUnder even more endless sky.\n\nThe newspapers say they didn’t get far,\n\nBut newspapers can lie.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nSomewhere out there, where the world is young,\n\nAnd time’s doors are open wide,\n\nWhere the cyclones roar, and the petrichor\n\nIncenses the highwayside,\n\nSyd is journeying evermore  \nAnd John is at his side.\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\nSomewhere out there they will ever be.\n\nI know it, if God does not.\n\nWhether they ever come back again\n\nI know they care not a jot,\n\nAnd even the day that’s the final day\n\nWill find them yet uncaught.\n\nI know time’s door has shut too slow.\n\nI know my dear friends live,\n\nAnd somewhere out there they are living on\n\nWhatever dear friendship gives.\n\nSo though it’s a crime, drink with me now:\n\nTo John, and his Dear Friend Syd.","series":{"name":"poetry","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/k1V93kbn-men-of-culture-and-good-breeding.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/14D4KWd1-an-act-of-seidhr.json"}}