Christopher Haywood Poet Free verse

Notes About The Poem

1942, "Casablanca", Rick's Café Américain, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Dooley Wilson, Rick Blaine, Ilsa Lund, “As Time Goes By”.  The song is a reminder to Ilsa's most precious moments, Rick experiences it as a source of intense resentment, leading him to forbid Sam from playing it in his cafe.  This is not about the film.

Notes Off the Cedar Beams

The plaster in Rick’s place was always flaking near the doorway,
   eaten away by damp heat and cheap tobacco smoke
   that hung like dirty lace off the cedar joists.
Back in the corner sat a stunted, yellowed box—
   a five-octave upright slapped with salmon and faded gold,
   its pedals worn down to raw, scuffed brass.
It wasn’t built for concert halls. Just a pine-cased crate
   that smelled of spilled Cointreau and stale olive brine.
Heavy teak doors kept the street noise out,
   but couldn’t block the shuffle of black-market transit papers
   passing under the low oil lamps.
Then Sam laid his knuckles on the keys,
   cracked ivory, half-sticking from the salt air,
   and the room went dead quiet.
She stood in the entry, silk coat catching the light,
   asking for that song from Paris
   before the tanks rolled in.
Rick didn't yell. He just stopped dead in his tracks,
   watching the smoke curl off his cigarette
   where it rested on the edge of the wood.
“Play it,” he muttered, his voice flat as gravel,
   and the little wooden box gave up the only thing it had left.

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