Love never goes away,Never completely dies,Always some souvenirTakes us by sad surprise.You went away from me,One rose was left behind--Pressed in my Book of Hours,That is the rose I find....Though it's another year,Though it's another me,Under the rose is a drying tear,Under my linden tree....Love never goes away,Not if it's really true,It can return, by night, by day,Tender and green and newAs the leaves from the linden tree, love,That I left with you.
-Thomas Pynchon
Pynchon is famous for the songs he embeds in his novels. Like a stage musical, people break into song at all times, sometimes motivated, but not always. Here apprentice witch Geli Tripping is accompanying herself on a balalaika when our hero (?) Tyrone Slothrop first meets her. (p.289 in my edition.) A lot of the poems/songs are contextual--whenever Major Marvy's Mothers, an American military detachment chasing Slothrop appears, they approach singing obscene limericks--but this one felt like it could stand on its own. It reminds me a bit of Heine.
Pynchon's a bit in the air these days and I'm rereading Gravity's Rainbow. I saw One Battle After Another, the new film by Paul Thomas Anderson, last night--quite good, I thought--based on Pynchon's novel Vineland. And the old wizard has a new novel out this fall, Shadow Ticket, but I haven't read it yet. How much of the old Pynchon am I going to reread before I get that? I'm not sure, but clearly some.
