Closing Time | Up There Down There

Ze wordt wel de hogepriesteres van de punk poëzie genoemd. Maar ze is thuis in tal van genres, waaronder de bluesrock.

Rock was getting too slick for its own good when Patti Smith burst on the scene and tore it apart.

She shrieked and howled literate yet street-savvy lyrics, unflinchingly confronting topics from religion to the Beat movement.

– Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Patti Smith is niet enkel een overtuigende rockzangeres, maar ook een echte dichter. Versregels als hieronder zouden niet hebben misstaan in een bloemlezing van Amerikaanse poëzie, tussen Allen Ginsberg en Campbell McGrath.

Down there where Jonah wails
in the healing water
in the ready depths
twisting like silver swans
no line of death no boundaries

Up there the eye is hollow the eye is winking
the winds ablaze angels howling
the sphinx awakens
but what can she say
you’d be amazed

Down there
your days are numbered
nothing to fear
there will be trumpets
there will be silence
in the end the end
will be here just here

Ahh the borders of heaven
are zipped up tight tonight
the abstract streets
the lights like some switched-on Mondrian
Cats like us are obsolete

Hey Man don’t breathe on my feet
Thieves, poets we’re inside out
and everybody’s a soldier
Angels howl at those abstract lights
and the borders of heaven
are zipped up tight tonight