Victor Talking Machine Company 78 rpm recording of Ja-Da (Arthur Fields, tenor vocal; Bob Carleton, composer and lyricist; Josef Pasternak, conductor): recording made 15 November 1918 (National Jukebox / Library of Congress)
The porchlight coming on again,
Early November, the dead leaves
Raked in piles, the wicker swing
Creaking. Across the lots
A phonograph is playing Ja-Da.
An orange moon. I see the lives
Of neighborhoods, mapped and marred
Like all the wars ahead, and R.
Insane, B. with his throat cut,
Fifteen years from now, in Omaha.
I did not know them then.
My airedale scratches at the door.
And I am back from seeing Milton Sills
And Doris Kenyon. Twelve years old.
The porchlight coming on again.
House in Beatrice, Nebraska: photo by John Vachon, October 1938 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)
Lunar eclipse on winter solstice, 21 December 2010, Strathcona County, Alberta: photo by 42things, 2010
1918 sheet music cover of Bob Carleton's Ja-Da: image by Jafeluv, 20 November 2009
Weldon Kees (b. 24 February 1915, Beatrice, Nebraska; d. 18 July 1955[?], San Francisco, California): 1926, from Poems 1947-1954, 1954
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