Irene

It's a warm, still March night when I hear her, walking home from the nearby pharmacy. It's dark and late, I am wrapped in my thoughts, and am also trying to pick my way over some inexplicable rubble on the road. I haven't noticed the shadowy figures who stand near the gate of a building I am approaching. So I am startled when one of them breaks into mellifluous song as I get close, her voice sailing clear and strong into the night. I am even more startled when I recognize what this lovely voice is singing: that old standard from Huddie Ledbetter and the Weavers, Goodnight Irene.

Woman and two kids, dressed in dusty raggedy clothes, carrying little bundles on their backs. Walking down the street, stopping to sing in the hope of coins flung from windows and balconies; asking me, in between lines, for a few too.

And right now, the woman sings Goodnight Irene.

From the way she pronounces the words, from how she runs syllables together so oddly, I guess that she doesn't understand what she sings. But she sings nevertheless.

Sometimes I live in the country,
Sometimes I live in town,
Sometimes I take a great notion,
To jump in the river and drown.

Irene goodnight, Irene goodnight,
Goodnight Irene, goodnight Irene,
I'll see you in my dreams.

I stand and watch them stroll, until they turn the corner and I can't see them any more. But I still hear the lilting words, softer now. Goodnight, goodnight.