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Dearly beloved, we gather here,

Where gatherings are forbid,

Though never a grave will either have,

Nor coffin, nay, nor lid,

To drink, at least, the last memory

To John, and his Dear Friend Syd.

John was a terror and reprobate

Who blew one day into town.

His eyes they glared as a beast’s would glare

When your headlights stared it down,

And we all of us said, that the likes of him

Ought not to hang around.

But Syd, I had known my life entire.

He lived next door but three

In the early days of innocence,

When we innocent were, and free.

Though I would prove the more innocent,

And he more free than me.

Together endured we days of school.

Together were we released

When cicadas spoke in the tangled oaks

And summer’s heat increased.

Together our bare feet knew the town

From Route Eight to Second East.

Together we’d go to the loon-loud lake

When the afternoons grew dry.

Together we’d hike to trestle bridge

When the 6:10 thundered by,

And never I noticed his hungry look

That would follow it, and sigh.

But those were the days when the world was young.

Young we may be no more.

This is a story too heavy by half

For my inept metaphor,

So I give you his: the past is a cage

And time is a closing door.

Time is the door that shuts on us.

They tell me it shut on them.

And gone are the days when we could be boys,

Now we are only men.

But the story will get there soon, too soon.

Let me begin again.

Syd grew into a lonely man.

Nobody thought much of that.

For this is a town of lonely folk

In a lonely habitat.

And at least our days were prosperous:

As prosperous as they were flat.

But John blew into town one day,

Perhaps on a midnight train.

Perhaps when a midnight bus broke down

And left no choice but to remain.

Perhaps on a distant thunder roll

And the far-off smell of rain.

John blew into town, just like

An afternoon cyclone would,

That rattles the latch of the cellar door

Where you shelter—as you should—

But even a wind so ill as that

Blew one man, at least, some good.

For when John blew into town, he found

But little welcome, and cold.

Most of the town were unfriendly folk.

And most of the town were old.

If lonely, yet they were prosperous:

They had, and they meant to hold.

I do not know how they came to meet.

I do not know what they said.

I know that Syd was the giving sort.

I know that John needed a bed.

So rather than alley or overpass,

John lived with Syd instead.

Syd he worked as he’d ever worked,

Diligent, dull, and hard.

John, he would do the odd odd-job

At the mill or the lumberyard

But mostly he wandered the town and stared

At the taciturn folk on guard.

A few words we’d exchange. There were

But few who would say a few.

Most dared no more than a silent nod.

Most kept their ‘how’re you?’

And if townsfolk could be taciturn,

John, he could be too.

But a few words we exchanged. I felt

I owed that much to Syd.

Together he was with John, as once

Together we’d been as kids.

But little and less I learned of John

No matter what I did.

I saw them, together, from time to time,

On the porch, when the summer sun

Was low and red and saturated

Till the clouds’ very colors run.

And in every thing you could all but smell

An ending but just begun.

But together they lived, and I liked it not.

It was Jealousy, I suppose.

But John he lived, and Syd he lived,

As many have done, God knows.

And whether they loved as well as lived

Is not for me to disclose.

Could they have been content with that?

God knows I could have been.

A home and a life with one you love,

God, what more is there to win?

But I do not know if God knows if it

Was love that they were in.

Could they have been content with that:

Four walls, a roof, and a floor?

Perhaps John was too much the reprobate.

Perhaps Syd wanted more,

And we remained only a lonely town,

And time was a closing door.

The buds were tight on the maple boughs,

The mud still froze each night,

When I noticed it’d been three days since I

Last noticed their window light.

And before I knew what the matter was

I knew it was not all right.

And before I knew what the matter was,

And before I had dared to knock,

I knew I’d hear no more answer from

That house than from solid rock.

But I didn’t expect the front door to be

So open, and so unlocked.

I didn’t expect to find the place

As empty as orderly.

With not a speck out of place to show

Where John, where Syd might be.

As if their home were a cage, and they

Had managed to wiggle free.

I locked the door with the stray spare key

Syd left on the kitchen floor.

I spread the word to a couple friends.

What could I have done more?

Than to close the door on the empty house

On which time had closed the door.

Nobody heard a word from Syd,

And certainly not from John.

Nobody had the first idea

Whither they both had gone.

Best to forget, we townsfolk said.

Best just to move along.

Best just to move along, and time

Had moving along to do.

And seasons passed as they always pass,

Till half a year became two.

And days when we thought of Syd and John,

As far as we knew, were through.

Spring she passed, and summer he passed,

And autumn brought usual news:

A dust storm blown, a Wall Street crash,

A senator’s son recused,

And a broker robbed, three states away

In a town called New Syracuse.

And a steamboat robbed, two states away

At a fork of the Missouri,

And only a state away, a bank

In a town called Gethsemane,

And if any but I had more than a guess

Then never a word reached me.

Autumn was nearly long enough

That I almost forgot again.

It’s hard to remember the world outside

In this town of lonely men.

But winter blew into town with Syd

And John, who was His Dear Friend.

The money was piled on the pantry floor,

The guns on a kitchen chair.

In a house that was once next door but three

And now was a bandit’s lair,

And it took too long to find my voice

Or do anything but stare.

John stared at me as a beast would stare

At one lost in the wilderness.

And aye, I feared for my life indeed,

It shames me to confess,

But John only turned to Syd and said,

“He came. You were right, I guess.”

Syd, he was suddenly once again

Who I’d known my whole life through.

And suddenly he was entirely tales

Of the things he had dared to do

The brighter his face grew in telling them,

The brighter John’s face grew too.

Oh, the tales he dared to tell me then

And swore me to never repeat,

Of midnight flight to the county line,

Of gunshots out in the street,

Of ever another getaway,

Of never a sole defeat.

Oh the sins he dared to confess to me

Which I repeat not at all, I swear.

Oh the terrible freedom of a world

When you do whatever you dare

In the reprobate’s life that John had lived

And Syd had longed to share.

And oh the way John looked at him

With every tale Syd told,

As a weary man looks, at a crackling hearth,

Who has just come in from the cold.

I’d almost have said he cared nothing for

Stolen banker’s gold.

I brought them some food, for the house had none.

I made them a makeshift bed.

And God knows the things I wished to say

Though none of them I said.

But how many times could these many tales

Have ended with one of them dead?

“Whatever you’ve done,” I finally said

“With whatever you’ve gotten away,

What a relief to leave it behind,

And have somewhere safe to stay.

For now you have riches secure enough

To last to your very last day.”

“The riches are nothing,” Syd shook his head

“I’ll stay here not one day more.

And only the day that’s the final day

Mean I to I return” he swore.

“For I tell you this: The past is a cage,

And time is a closing door.”

“But the money-”

“The money was never the point,”

Said Syd, to his Dear Friend John.

“Together we are, and together we’ll be,

And together we’re moving on.”

They bade me goodnight and they sent me back me home.

Come morning, they were gone.

Oh Dearly Beloved, would that I had known

Some better way to implore

To give up this madness and come back home

And rovering go no more.

But perhaps it was always too late, and Time

Had already closed that door.

Most of the money they left behind.

I’ll tell you not where it went.

Save only my mother in heaven taught

That money’s a sin, unspent,

And never a worker in town, that year,

Needed worry to pay the rent.

Twas barely a week ere the news came in.

From a bank down in Ouachitee.

Caution they’d thrown to the cyclone winds:

For every last one to see:

There on the front page news was John

And his Dear Friend Syd’s crime spree.

Again they struck, a Duranzo bank.

Again they struck, in New Lodz.

Every time they escaped unscathed

Never you mind the odds.

Police seemed all perfectly powerless

To halt their proud maraud.

Again they struck and again they struck.

The news was of naught but them.

And harder and harder the newspapers tried

Their robberies to condemn,

But ever the readers fell more in love

With glorious mayhem.

Some said they were a menace

To all of society,

Accused them of communism

And unnaturality.

As if those things were somehow worse

Than simple bank robbery.

But others would call them heroes,

If they thought it was safe to speak:

Those who were not so prosperous,

Those were wearied and weak,

Said what was lost by the rich could be

Inherited by the meek.

So when with admixtured triumph

They blew back into town,

And Syd was friendly and frantic,

Handshakes all around,

And John hung back in silence

And nothing would do but frown,

Most of us came to greet them.

Most of us said hello.

Most of us our ignorance

Took plentiful pains to show:

And if a bank somewhere’d been robbed,

Why how were we to know?

But the oldest, loneliest, prosperous,

They shut their doors and blinds.

That never a welcome a man like John,

Like Syd had become, should find.

Neither one seemed to notice, though.

Neither one seemed to mind.

“Surely now you are satisfied,”

I begged, “and can now return.

“Seldom a man on a path like yours

Good name and good will can earn.

A chance for peace and prosperity,

No outlaw ought to spurn.”

But Syd just smiled. And the wonder was

That John he smiled as well

And said “How fast Time's door'll close,

Well, I dunno how to tell.

When the high road slow, the swift road low

Both only lead to hell.”

“It always was going to end that way,

So the end matters not at all.

Only the way we live till then.

Only how, not if, we fall.

So till Time shuts their door on me

I live at Syd’s beck and call.”

“My life was always to end this way

So till it is all gone by,

I'll burn every fuckin’ second to light

The fire in Sydney's eye.”

And if greater love man ever hath had,

Then God may know. Not I.

I gave them what help I had. God knows

That persuasion I had no more.

By morning they'd left, left not a speck

Of evidence on the floor

While the past was a cage shutting still too slow

And time a still-closing door.

But the oldest, loneliest, prosperous

Less merciful were than Time.

In our glorious criminal Icari

They nothing would see but crime,

And maybe a shot at “recovered” gold,

Of which they'd seen not a dime.

So the oldest, loneliest, prosperous

With policemen one, two, three,

Did set ablaze Syd’s empty house

Lest they innocent prove, or free.

The next three months I passed in fear

Lest next they should come for me.

By now, dear beloved, you’ve heard the news.

Why else would you gathered be?

And it’s honored I am to say my piece

To Syd and John’s memory.

So remember, whatever the news may say,

John and Syd are free.

I know what the papers will claim to tell.

I know what the preachers say.

Reprobates all are bound for hell,

And these two are on their way.

But listen and let one more reprobate

A little your fears allay.

For I was the last to speak to Syd,

Assuming you don’t count John.

Syd, he had known me his life entire,

Though now, so they say, that’s gone.

So went I to warn them to lay down arms,

For an ambush was coming on.

And I was the last to speak to John,

Excepting of course for Syd.

Though aye, they had done forbidden things

But friendship’s not yet forbid.

I left the town, never mind you when.

I followed where they were hid.

I said, “They’ve called in federal men,

Guns eager all to be drawn.

The federals will be coming soon,

They’ll arrive by the break of dawn.

If you but surrender quietly

You may yet survive this, John.”

“Then I’ll to jail, and he’ll to jail

Separate, but alive?”

Said John, “but if we are separate,

Why should I want to survive?

Better to go down, beside him, when

Cops, death, and dawn arrive.”

“If we have to run,” said Syd, “we run.

In concrete our course be set,

And we’ll run it forever, wait and see.

Promise you won’t forget

However they lie, whatever they say:

Believe we are running yet.”

Before the dawn had raised his voice

They’d made their last goodbye.

They vanished down an endless road

Under even more endless sky.

The newspapers say they didn’t get far,

But newspapers can lie.

Somewhere out there, where the world is young,

And time’s doors are open wide,

Where the cyclones roar, and the petrichor

Incenses the highwayside,

Syd is journeying evermore

And John is at his side.

Somewhere out there they will ever be.

I know it, if God does not.

Whether they ever come back again

I know they care not a jot,

And even the day that’s the final day

Will find them yet uncaught.

I know time’s door has shut too slow.

I know my dear friends live,

And somewhere out there they are living on

Whatever dear friendship gives.

So though it’s a crime, drink with me now:

To John, and his Dear Friend Syd.