I went to Charles Shaar Murray's Sixtieth this evening

[rozk]

Blues 4 for Charles
There is a music only old men know
who've had the years to etch their fierce throats
with dark smoke and strong drink, who wear long coats
that fit so well, the shoulders seem to show

each shrug, each pose, as if a spur of bone
had joined them. It's a music made of tears
carving deep valleys, deaths paid in arrears,
the sense that friends go. That you are alone

up on the stage although you have a band
around you, and they're solitary too
held in a net of mood. All that you do
is what the years have made you understand

how sadnesses hold, twine themselves round joys
what life builds in us, each time it destroys.