Sometimes when I wake in the morning
I want to go up to Innisfree
often enough and again
I want to lay down in bed
and drink in the dreams
of a lover long gone across the waters
it's then when the chords of the drummer
come alive in my head

'wake up' sing the drummer boy
'come arise now for the dawn is come'
and he laugh and shake his tambourine
start to tapping on his tympanum

when you work for a living, well
the system has a tendency to 'get to' you
and taking the tubes into town'll take it
out of your hide
but it's alright
I hear the swift, sweet musical interlude banged out by a drummer
playing the platform on Manhattan-side

O Drummer Boy!
I'm wondering how did he get there
and I hear his voice reverberate
as we ten thousand stumble up the subway stair

on any given day (now) you can hear him
in the heart of the city
beating his wings like a dove
in the belly of the whale
among the cinders and girders
the concrete and ashes
he seems compelled
to tell his tale

of being born as a drummer boy
soon apprenticed to a mummers band
refugee gypsy of the angry night
sojourner in the foreign land
singing 'go up!'
it's a shame what we do to the language
not to mention other miracles
the noon rolls around
we only mark it as a number on the Dow
I must put it down, hit the pavement
consult inner oracles
hey, could that be a drummer
playing on the corner to the lunchtime crowd

O Drummer Boy!
sing his song and trope in rhyming tongue
indeed he's got me wondering how
he get the six string sound out of his steel drum

he tells the tale
of the outlaw, renegade lover
he could not deny her
who loved her the best of his kind
married in moonlight and water
they sail on the Rubicon
not knowing what Eden
or land to the east they may find

time is tapping on the drummer boy
lovely lady re-arrange her plans
and he has given up his Wall Street job
to sing in a Rock of Gibraltar band

he was born to the drum
was a drummer boy's son of a drummer boy
seven generations of preparation
poised at his command
now he tunes up his timbrels and bass
in the shadow of the marketplace
turns to his countrymen and
proclaims his demand

'give a dollar to the drummer boy
give him something with an open hand
think it over for a moment now
you may never pass this way again

and if you go, go up! ,
nowadays I'm amazed
to make it home in the evening
a certain kind of peacefulness
is singing alive in the air
have a drink with a friend
as the dusk come down over Brooklyn
once again
and drink one for the drummer
I hear his music everywhere

o serenade me drummer boy
tide me over til the dawning's come
when I'm going down for dreaming now
heartbeat pounding like the drummer's drum

Jack he live on alone
and without Ezekiel
Elizabeth and Thomas are
living in Paris he say
I think of old friends
well I guess how we all have got to travel
I think of one lover
am I ever going to see her someday
o tell me truly drummer boy
is that happy morning still to come
I'm listening for hints and clues
every time you play your scales and runs

and go up!

© 1983 by David Indian, The Parkdale Poetry Publishing Co.