Boldt Words & Images: Gate of Ivory Gate of Horn (a poem)

(“Glad I was Chicago born”)

By Bob Boldt

For Deborah, whom I knew long before we met

To be read over music background:

It’s 1954. Dearborn and State. Gate of Horn Saturday night. My best friend, Tom Clemens to my right
and to the left of me, standing at the bar,
Roger McGuinn¹. I have no idea who he is, just another pair of listening ears...
“That old Bilbao moon, I won’t forget it soon...
Just like a big balloon.”²

Eyes on Will Holt’s pin spot-lit face. Kurt Weill’s music.
Most only know of The Gate as an interesting sidebar to “Inside Llewyn Davis.”³

I remember beer-smelled black floors, red tables, cigarette smoke pierced by aforementioned pin-spot.

I didn’t know you then. At my revels you were in grade school barely as naive as me. I was 16 when you were 12, growing up through Kinsey and Kesey, Giacometti and Ginsberg. Quaint and lovely in retrospect, never having heard of Homer’s Gates of Horn and Ivory. Sneaking out of the house to New York to hear Ginsberg read, while me catching Muddy at the Club DeLisa.

Even in ’68 we were leaders. Now we are elders. Eyes are on the smoky pinspot. Ears listening to our song even if we don’t always remember the text.
“That old Bilbao moon would rise above the dune
While Tony’s Beach Saloon rocked with an old-time tune.”²

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1. Roger McGuinn:

2. Lyrics quoted from the “Bilbao-Song,” from Kurt Weill’s three-act musical comedy, Happy End.
    Lotte Lenya sings the “Bilbao-Song”:

3. This video pretty well sums up the Gate:

Copyright © 2019 by Bob Boldt