Oh my darling

(2 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

At one point in the “arts festival” at my 4th grade nephew’s parochial school, after much memorized traditional poetry and what-not, including “the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” musket-balls and all (I thought the sisters would go more Gerald Manley Hopkins-ish, Wreck of the Deutschland, the drowning nun christening her wild-worst Best,  or the many dappled things of Pied Beauty, or something, but I suppose the festival was pure Americana at heart), the kids sang, “Oh my darling, Clementine,” a story about a miner whose daughter falls down some gold-sluice, or something; he can’t swim and just watches her go under.  There are definitely “levels” to the grief contained in that little ditty, e.g., “Clementine’s” presumed narrator-lover and little sister can go Elvis themselves, with respect to the “grief aspect,” which I’m sure they did, and god bless, really, but “I’d help, but I can’t swim,” says Pops?  There is an obvious logic to his inaction, also, of course, which only adds to the grief.  I hear my nephew sing that song through the walls, and my Colbertian gut tells me that the Silesian Sisters knew exactly what they were doing (to the parents) when they taught the kids to sing that song about “roses fertilized by Clementine” to the big folk.  Just a guess.