Song of Black Max (As Told by the de Kooning Boys)

He was always dressed in black,

long black jacket, broad black hat,

sometimes a cape,

and as thin as rubber tape: Black Max.

He would raise that big black hat

to the big-shots of the town

who raised their hats right back,

never knew they were bowing to Black Max.

I'm talking about night in Rotterdam

when the right night people of all the town

would find what they could

in the night neighborhood of Black Max.

There were women in the windows

with bodies for sale

dressed in curls like little girls

in little dollhouse jails.

When the women walked the street

with the beds upon their backs,

who was lifting up his brim to them?

Black Max!

And there were looks for sale,

the art of the smile —

(only certain people walked that mystery mile;

artists, charlatans, vaudevillians,

men of mathematics, acrobatics, and civilians).

There was knitting-needle music

from a lady organ-grinder

with all her sons behind her,

Marco, Vito, Benno

(Was he strong! though he walked like a woman)

and Carlo, who was five.

He must be still alive!

Ah, poor Marco had the syph, and if

you didn't take the terrible cure those days

you went crazy and died and he did.

And at the coffin before they closed the lid,

who raised his lid? Black Max.

I was climbing on the train

one day going far away

to the good old U.S.A.

when I heard some music

underneath the tracks.

Standing there beneath the bridge,

long black jacket, broad black hat,

playing the harmonica, one hand free

to lift that hat to me:

Black Max, Black Max, Black Max.