for Bob Dylan
I
What can I say about Bob Dylan?
That some strange, authentic light
passed into him from blind bluesmen
on corners, singing their stories
of trains and chains and hope;
blind bluesmen, miles from any college
or guitar academy, with the wind
at their backs, or their backs
against some wall in East Texas,
playing sublime bottleneck guitar
with the necks of broken bottles.
That he was light-hearted and free
and only twenty,
when he first took to the road,
with ten dollars, a harmonica,
and his guitar;
that he saw Woody Guthrie
signposting the way to go …
and went, with little inclination
to look back on old Duluth,
dying in the moonlight.
That he enrolled early in that authentic,
beaming and screaming college
of real life, and never left it,
because all he needed – all the diverse,
sounds and colours of that authenticity –
met him there and filled his spirit;
that his America was always a place
in which unwanted migrants moved
across railway tracks and truck yards,
seeking somewhere to remain.
That he was young when he left home –
young and ready to change the world forever,
if only he could elude
the Rising Sun’s beckoning sirens;
that he could look north to where the wind
was blasting against the borderline,
yet pluck from his heart
the gentlest of chords …
or walk, arm in arm, with his girl
down the boulevard of broken dreams.
That he understood the essential
difference between someone who sings
and a real singer … how a song
must possess him and keep him close
to the trembling, naked world
which summons songs into being;
that the unfiltered sounds
of all things flowed through him –
all the discordant, muddy voices
of the river that bore the slaves.
That he recounted in fearless detail
the sad tale of Emmett Till: how he was
butchered by a ghostly cohort
of the white-robed Ku Klux Klan;
that he thought long and hard about them,
and about the senseless slaying of Hattie Carroll:
how justice favours those who rule,
rather than those whose small, arduous lives
are shackled to their masters’ tables,
until they die there – violently or otherwise.
That he saw death up close and chose to be
the lonesome traveller whose life task
was to unmask the truth,
in a world where the truth kept dancing ahead,
like some elusive tambourine player;
that he sang in his own way,
with a force that moved the world
and asked big questions about being a man …
what it means … and how to make each choice,
and did it all so earnestly in that perfect voice.
II
What can I say about Bob Dylan?
That he was one of the few who protested
vociferously against the masters of war
and fame and greed who reign on earth,
yet never allowed protest to be his
only idiom … never seized the easy option
of allowing his life to become a single
monotonous diatribe in which
every answer to every dilemma is either
black or white, for he had seen
and known so much behind the shades.
That he blew great smoke rings for the mind,
and journeyed deep into the heat of Harlem
to ponder the ephemeral perceptions
of a Spanish gipsy girl, swaying hypnotically
to sounds from worlds beyond hers;
that students in bedsits sat and listened to his records,
and felt the first stirrings of their true selves,
because he was the echo of a vast universe
in which the times were changing,
and the voiceless were beginning to be heard.
That he wore many caps and pillbox hats,
but none he couldn’t easily balance
on his head, or on a bottle of wine
belonging to some Bradford millionaire;
that he was the standard bearer – the high,
lone-flier others had to aim at – the one
who continually watched and listened
as hooded hordes trudged mechanically
back and forth over bridges
leading to factories and groceries and little else.
That he was the song and dance man –
the poet laureate of the people – who arrived
when poetry had been hijacked
by gold-star universities breaking faith
with the innate music of the human heart;
that he honed his craft in East Orange’s
green pastures, where Rita-May
and a few autodidactic free spirits
were his most essential book of knowledge,
in a universe going rapidly nowhere.
That he saw from the beginning how one
who endeavours to be right for everybody,
is wrong for the world,
because the world needs to be challenged
or it won’t wake up … it won’t be shaken
from the siren comforts of its own sedation;
that his voice was forever full of sounds
never heard before him … those long
and rolling songs of thunder … those long
and bittersweet parables of a rolling stone.
That he was a chameleon, a shape-shifter
and did it often to elude his trackers,
who wanted him to remain static,
or be more perfectly like them …
with eyes to make a snake proud;
that he changed his style
from simple ballads to surreal visions,
and was booed and jeered and called ‘Judas’,
but played electrically on,
watched by a laughing raven.
That he built word-pictures, layer by layer,
and was the master of vagueness …
the restless, elusive one, who never wished
to be tied to one place, or one time,
or just one woman – and yet, he offered
sound directions about the best path home;
he offered a clear road map
for the wastelands of Desolation Row,
where survival is a perpetual game of dice,
and did it so pragmatically in that perfect voice.
III
What can I say about Bob Dylan?
That he had his own apocalyptic motorcycle
nightmare, on a slippery dawn stretch
of Suicide Road, and afterwards
shunned drink and drugs and stardom
and became eternity’s simple pilgrim;
that he worked obsessively for days
paying sober tributes to his ‘sad-eyed Lady’,
who seemed elusive and difficult to define,
as Quinn the Eskimo kept his distance,
and Louise put the ‘rain’ back in her pocket.
That he felt the rush of the streets
and the solitude of the hills and forests,
and no experience went unwanted,
because everything he did enabled him to see
distinctly the difference between paradise
and the shimmering pleasure house across the road;
that he thought twice about accepting accolades
from pale-egg producing professors
in the henhouse academies of poetry,
where no product outlasts its ‘sell-by’ date.
That he wrote songs with music in them,
songs with meter and rhythm and sharp-eyed
images that would linger in your head,
like some finely condensed film, or an old
well-crafted poem you could actually call a poem;
that highly trained singers sang notes from sheet
music, and strove for perfect diction,
but he was different: he preferred to weave
his voice into the dramatic tapestries he created …
he preferred to be believably tangled up in blue.
That he understood the call of the road
and how the universe itself is a long pathway
back to Eden … back to that first world
which can’t be apprehended
until the journey uncovers it for us;
that his craft was shaped by an intuitive
understanding of how the power of simplicity
can bring timeless scenes to life: a few chords,
a few suggestive phrases, and suddenly
there’s a moon, a girl … and you can almost feel her!
That he was enlightened early about the way
every small success makes
a new and greater effort necessary in order
for inspiration’s gods to smile one’s way again …
to invoke some new vision of Johanna,
or the Faerie Queen;
that he was beset often by the urge
to give up – to go home and live a quiet life
in the arms of the girl from the Red River Shore,
who, of course, had long ago departed.
That he was the jingle-jangle man,
the master-puppeteer behind the white face
and the tambourine
and the many screens of himself …
all so vividly alive and breathing;
that he was the wonder boy,
the burlesque Chaplin of Modern Times,
who shuffled and danced and didn’t care
too much for being modern,
if there was nothing eternal in it.
That he lived and loved and moulded
each experience into the sweetest
or bitterest of sounds, and often placed
them side by side on the same record;
that his art encompassed not only the human heart’s
bright visions of love and paradise,
but visions also of deep, dark places
where he never feared to go … places
where vultures feed on death and desolation,
and Noah is always the first to leave.
That he chronicled the whole flow of hope
and horror from Kennedy to Covid,
from Gandhi to Gallo – and then, for an encore,
conjured a haunting tour-de-force
about a strange wedding between a child
and a prostitute in beautiful Key West;
that he was always going back,
always revisiting the sounds of things imbued
with the magic to outlive their birthplace
and their brief hour upon Time’s loom.
That he was with us from the day
black people had no rights, to the day
a white policeman was arraigned
for applying the full weight of the law
to the neck of a man helplessly gasping for air;
that he was with us, and had his say,
and brought equality and freedom
a few steps closer,
even though it isn’t time yet to rejoice,
and he did it all so knowingly in that perfect voice.
“I’m sure that I’ll learn from your poem, enjoying it the while, so thank you for sending it to me.”
– Christopher Ricks –
Christopher Ricks is a British literary critic and scholar who currently teaches at Boston University. He speaks of Dylan as “the greatest living user of the English language”.
I love The Perfect Voice. It is really something. It opens beautifully, attributing Dylan’s uniqueness to an authentic light that passed into him from blind bluesmen on street corners. I love how it paints the picture that Dylan absorbed this raw, genuine expression of the human experience. That is really beautiful. I especially appreciate how the poem portrays him as someone who embraced the authenticity of real life, leaving behind his hometown and diving into a diverse, colourful world. I am relating to that right now with my situation. Also, congratulations on the display at the Bob Dylan Archive in Tulsa. Amazing!
– Phil Conil. Strangelandic Music –
from the Chained Mused Website
MARTIN MC CARTHY POET 
42 responses to “The Perfect Voice”
Martin, I like your poem and will share it on social media.
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Martin, I liked your poem so much that I decided to write a poem about my first encounter with Bob Dylan, hearing “Blowin’ in the Wind” on a London rooftop…
My boyhood introduction to the Prophet Laureate and how I became his Mini-Me at age eleven
by Michael R. Burch
for Martin Mc Carthy, author of “The Perfect Voice”
Atop a London rooftop
on a rare sunny, smogless day,
between the potted geraniums,
I hear the strange music play …
Not quite a vintage Victrola,
but maybe a half step up:
late ’69 technology.
I sat up, abrupt.
What the hell was I hearing,
a prophet from days of yore?
Whatever it was, I felt it —
and felt it to the core.
For the times, they are a-changin’ …
The unspoken answer meandered
on the wings of a light summer breeze,
unfiltered by the geraniums
and the dove in me felt ill at ease.
For the times, they are a-changin’ …
I was only eleven and far from heaven,
intent on rock music (and lust),
far from God and his holy rod
(seduced by each small budding bust).
For the times, they are a-changin’ …
Who was this unknown prophet
calling me back to the path
of brotherhood through peace?
I felt like I needed a bath!
For the times, they are a-changin’ …
Needless to say, I was altered.
Perhaps I was altared too.
I became a poet, peace activist,
and now I Am preaching to you!
For the times, they are a-changin’ …
Get off your duffs, do what you can,
follow the Prophet’s declaiming:
no need to kneel, just even the keel,
For the times, they are a-changin’!
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Your poem is incredible, sir. It is a testament to how inspiring great works of art can be. Your piece is very relatable, as I think at some point, we have all felt what Robert Frost describes as “the immortal wound,” where we encounter a great work of art and are profoundly impacted by it. It speaks to our souls and haunts us (in a good way, of course), perhaps even transforms us. I think you capture that feeling remarkably well. I especially love your use of imagery in this stanza:
The unspoken answer meandered
on the wings of a light summer breeze,
unfiltered by the geraniums
and the dove in me felt ill at ease.
So beautiful! Thank you for sharing, sir!
– Shannon
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Thank you, Michael. I wrote it for Bob Dylan’s 82nd birthday because I very much wanted to pay tribute to him while he is still with us – still writing astonishingly good songs such as ‘Key West’ and ‘Murder Most Foul’. May he live a long while yet!
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Great poets never die, their words are with us forever.
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Amusingly, I have a poem titled “Murder Most Fowl” about an owl who eats an unhappy mouse.
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Michael you are not only one of the best poetry translators, but also a very gifted poet, who has written, to my knowledge, excellent poems about almost every topic, so hearing this doesn’t surprise me. Then, of course, there is always the unspoken matter of ‘synchronicities’ and things that lead us to a certain place to do something very specific, like saying: ‘Thank you, Bob Dylan.’
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I find such synchronicities interesting. My poem was originally title “Murder Most Foul” but I changed it because the murderer was an owl/fowl.
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I imagine that Dylan might be interested to hear that story – the story of ‘Murder Most Fowl’. I find lots of humour in his songs, especially some of the earlier ones, such as ‘Motorpsycho Nightmare’. Humour and seriousness are a particularly intriguing combo for song writing, and not a bad combo for living either!
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It’s fantastic to read such a comprehensive poem chronicling the length and breadth and depth of Dylan’s life and work. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you.
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There is almost a Biblical tone to that lovely comment, Sarah Jane. You might be interested to know (or may already know) that Dylan wrote a song called ‘Sarah Jane’. It’s on his 1973 album called Dylan, if you want to check it out.
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Yes, a Biblical nuance was intended, Martin. Very apt for the man who keeps ‘Pressing On’ towards that higher calling…
I will look up the song you mentioned. Thank you very much.
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Thanks for getting back to me. I’m sure Dylan would be pleased to hear that. Believe it or not, somebody is actually singing one of his songs on the radio, in the background as I write this, so that must be a sign from that ‘higher’ place you speak of.
I hope you find ‘Sarah Jane’ – and I hope you like it, Sarah Jane.
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In something of the same way that Dylan himself gave us his ‘Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie’, this has the feel of an unmercifully great river flow, carrying us through the many and varied versions of who and what Dylan really is – and to the crux of him, the rare and mighty spirit. A beautifully crafted paean that in accumulation elevates to something more and greater than its parts, tapping into ‘otherness’, revealing a precious, teasing glimpse of that state, out where the black winds blow, where inspiration – or better yet, understanding – dwells.
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This is quite a comment, Billy, and I really appreciate the thought and care you put into writing it. I think Dylan is one of the good guys – one of those rare, special people we see sporadically throughout history – and mere mention of him seems to bring out the very best in people, especially those who have followed his long journey through the years and are aware how he has voiced so many things most of us are unable to say. Mere mention of his ‘Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie’ has taken me back to the beginning, and I must play it again later.
He is, as you say, ‘that rare and mighty spirit’, and I guess, for that reason, the generations coming after us will seek him out and possibly equate him to Mozart in music and Walt Whitman in poetry. Thanks again for your comment.
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He’s definitely a guiding light for those who feel the resonance of his work. I suppose we have to be careful not to deify him but it is hard not to feel there’s an aspect of prophet in what he’s offered to the world these past 60+ years. A true original, undoubtedly, and one of a rare kind.
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I remember something Dylan said in tribute to Johnny Cash when he died – he said: ‘John was like the North Star, you could steer your life by him’. And the same thing can be said of Dylan himself. He set out on life’s journey, and he never lost his sense of purpose. He never got lost along the way. So he is indeed a guiding light.
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I wonder, Martin, whether there is a specific reason for the capital T in ‘Time’s loom’ in the second last verse of the poem? Is it something sifted from the Time Out of Mind album, or a reference to the ‘burlesque Chaplin of Modern Times’, or an allusion to some other Dylan song or album that I’m not familiar with? I would be pleased if you could expand on this a little for me.
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That’s a very intriguing question, and one that’s quite difficult to answer, but I’ll give it a go. Firstly, I wanted to draw the reader’s attention to the word Time – especially at the very end of a long poem chronicling the long life of a creative artist over a time span of 60+ years. Secondly, this particular creative artist has always been conscious of time. For instance, he has a song titled ‘Born in Time’ and albums (as you say) titled Time out of Mind and Modern Times.
As for the phrase ‘Time’s loom’, I was thinking in particular of a line by Yeats where he says: ‘The innocent and the beautiful/Have no enemy but time’, meaning that in the end all of us run out of time. So, the best we can do, the best we can hope for, is to have woven a dazzling tapestry from the fabric of our lives before that happens.
There are also other meanings there, connected with Shelley and Keats, but I’ve said enough (perhaps too much) already, but it’s such a great, perceptive question. Thanks for asking it.
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‘The best we can do, the best we can hope for, is to have woven a dazzling tapestry from the fabric of our lives before our time runs out.’
I have slightly altered your inspirational quote, so that I can put it into my gratitude and song lyrics journal. Whether you meant it to be so quotable, I don’t know, but I hope you don’t mind me borrowing it for my notebook. It may inspire a new song.
Thank you for elaborating on the ‘Time’s loom’ reference. I enjoyed reading your comment. Then I found ‘Born in Time’ (the song you mentioned) online and had a good listen to it. It was definitely not a song I was familiar with, but I liked it very much. I think I’m just beginning my journey into the vast world of Bob Dylan!
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That’s an excellent quote. With your permission, I will add it to THT collection of the best epigrams from poetry and literature. You will be in very good company with Twain, Wilde, et al.
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It’s always an honour to be quoted by other people, as long as they credit me if that quote is from one of my poems. What I write in comments, or replies to comments, I have no issue with. In fact, it’s lovely to think that some random words of mine might inspire somebody out there to write something as magical as a song, and I look forward to hearing it someday – hopefully, on the radio or on YouTube.
As for your ‘journey into the vast world of Bob Dylan’, it’s the perfect thing to do if your goal is to write great songs. Always pit yourself against the best there is, then someday you may excel in their company – the trick is to start right now, knowing that any vast tapestry begins with a stitch or two. Good luck, Sarah Jane.
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I have just seen Michael’s response to that quote you picked out from my comments and ‘altered slightly’ – and I’m taken aback because he thinks it’s good enough to publish, so I’ll format it like a poem for you to keep in your notebook, Sarah Jane.
Tapestry
for Sarah Jane
The best we can do, the best we can hope for,
is to have woven a dazzling tapestry
from the fabric of our lives before our time runs out.
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Martin, your title reminds me of a poem I wrote for my son Jeremy when he was a boy. The poem has been set to music by David Hamilton, an award-winning New Zealand composer.
The Tapestry of Leaves
for Jeremy
Leaves unfold
as life is sold,
or bartered, for a moment in the sun.
The interchange
of lives is strange:
what reason—life—when death leaves all undone?
O, earthly son,
when rest is won
and wrested from this ground, then through my clay’s
soft mortal soot
thrust forth your root
until your leaves embrace the sun’s bright rays.
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Loving your website Martin, great way to lay out all the poetry. Terrific poem as well, and well presented. Great work deserves to look well!
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Thank you, Mike, for saying so. I was tempted for a moment to take all the credit for the way in which everything is so well presented on my website, but the truth is I get some help from a ‘computer wizard’ named Simon. Still, the poems are mine, and they do ‘look well’. So I’ll do the right thing and say thank you to Simon also.
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I read your poem and many of your words sounded familiar to me. Do you know how many Dylan lines or song titles you mentioned in your tribute?
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Until you asked that question, Helena, I had absolutely no idea how many Dylan lines, or bits of lines, or song titles are in my poem, but I took a quick look just now and I counted over fifty. There are other references to things connected to Dylan, such as the line ‘he had seen and know so much behind the shades’. This can be taken at face value, but it also alludes to Clinton Heylin’s biography of Dylan, titled Behind the Shades. Likewise, the line ‘the wonder boy’ alludes to the movie, Wonder Boys, for which Dylan performs ‘Things Have Changed’ on the soundtrack, and appears also in the music video looking like ‘a burlesque Chaplin of Modern Times’.
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This comment is for Michael Burch in No 10 above because I had no ‘Reply’ box to put it in.
I like your poem, Michael. Do you have a link for David Hamilton’s musical version of it, in case any reader wants to hear it? After all, this whole post is greatly concerned with music and what survives us.
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This is a link to one of David Hamilton’s scores with my lyrics to “Moon Lake,” a poem I wrote in my teens.
Click to access 28027_smp.pdf
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I checked out that link, Michael. It must be wonderful to have your poems set to music – and ‘Moon Lake’ is such an evocative title!
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Yes, it’s wonderful to have poems set to music by composers and the next song will be my 50th.
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What a remarkable tribute! It’s a rare thing now to see a totally coherent 14 page poem, let alone one that chronicles so eloquently Bob Dylan’s entire career in songwriting.
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Thanks, Will, for saying so. I think you’ve summed up perfectly what I was endeavouring to do when I set out to write this poem, and your word ‘chronicles’ is very apt in terms of Dylan because the first instalment of his remarkable autobiography is titled Chronicles 1.
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Dylan is remarkable because he stayed true to himself and just ‘kept on keeping on’ no matter what trends came and went.
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Yes, there is a lesson for us all in that, and the idea of Dylan as someone who stayed true to his authentic self is indeed the main theme of this tribute.
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In your poem you called Dylan ‘the poet laureate of the people’. Do you think this title portrays him accurately? And why so?
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In a way, Sarah Jane, your question goes to the very heart of my poem in that it’s primarily a poem about being an authentic poet/songwriter, and how that quality emanates from being with real people in the great university of life, rather than attending some ‘Gold Star’ university course, where no professor can teach you how to feel, and how to live, and what to value.
Yet, right from the beginning, Dylan imbued his songs with such insights – be it from the life of Emmett Till, Hollis Brown, Hattie Carroll, George Jackson, Hurricane Carter or Blind Willie Mc Tell. That’s why he is indeed ‘the poet laureate of the people’.
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Ranker has a public poll about the greatest songwriter. John Lennon and Paul McCartney are first, followed by Bob Dylan, but since he wrote his best-known songs by himself, I think he wins the individual songwriter consensus.
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I think so, too, Michael. And many of his songs have a visionary, social dimension that has added greatly to numerous movies. Recently, I was watching Watchmen, and The Times They Are A-Changin’ sounded so appropriate and prophetic in the background.
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This poem is a phenomenal tribute to Bob Dylan, the great poet and lyricist of America. The first thing that stands out to me is how incredible every line of this piece is, especially when one considers that it comprehensively chronicles the entire span of Dylan’s very long career. Accomplishing such a feat requires a great deal of poetic skill. In less skilled hands, a poem like this could easily become dry, bland, and prosaic. “The Perfect Voice” is none of those things, as it enthralls the reader from start to finish. I especially love how the main focus of the poem is the authenticity of Bob Dylan and the art he created. In remaining true to himself, Dylan defied the conventions of both the music industry and the literary establishment. I am especially partial to this stanza:
That he saw from the beginning how one
who endeavours to be right for everybody,
is wrong for the world,
because the world needs to be challenged
or it won’t wake up … it won’t be shaken
from the siren comforts of its own sedation;
that his voice was forever full of sounds
never heard before him … those long
and rolling songs of thunder … those long
and bittersweet parables of a rolling stone.
Bravo, Mr. McCarthy! I hope your masterpiece reaches Bob Dylan’s attention somehow. He really needs to see this.
– Shannon
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I am very touched that you read my words so carefully, then took the time to write down some that were particularly meaningful for you. Thank you so much, Shannon. Your comments are much appreciated.
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