Great Poems: ‘The Sometime Dancer Blues’

The Sometime Dancer Blues

by Donald Justice

When the lights go on uptown
Why do you feel so low, honey,
Why do you feel so low-down?

When the piano and the trombone start,
Why do you feel so blue, honey,
Like a rubber glove had reached in for your heart?

Oh, when the dancers take the floor,
Why don’t you step on out, honey,
Why won’t you step out with them anymore?

The stars are gone and the night is dark,
Except for the radium, honey,
That glows on the hands of the bedside clock,

The little hands that go around and around,
Oh, as silently as time, honey,
Without a sound, without a sound.

*****

I always wanted to write poems like this.

The poem itself is not complicated. It’s just 15 lines, 3 lines per stanza. It doesn’t refer to Shakespeare or Plato or anything high-minded from history. It’s just a little blues-music pattern, used to describe a feeling. But that feeling is as complex, as the poem itself is simple.