Austin Kleon — "Thousand-and-first Ship," F. Scott Fitzgerald

Obscure poem that Billy Lee Brammer used for the title of The Gay Place:

In the fall of sixteen
In the cool of the afternoon
I saw Helena
Under a white moon—
I heard Helena
In a haunted doze
Say: “I know a gay place
Nobody knows.”

Her voice promised
She’d live with me there
She’d bring me everything—
I needn’t care:
Patches to mend my clothes
When they were torn
Sunshine from Maryland,
Where I was born.

My kind of weather,
As wild as wild,
And a funny book
I wanted as a child;
Sugar and, you know,
Reason and ryhme,
And water like water
I had one time.

There’d be an orchestra
Bingo! Bango!
Playing for us
To dance the tango,
And people would clap
When we arose,
At her sweet face
And my new clothes

But more than all this
Was the promise she made
That nothing, nothing,
Ever would fade—
Nothing would fade
Winter or fall,
Nothing would fade,
Practically nothing at all.

Helena went off
And married another,
She may be dead
Or some man’s mother.
I have no grief left
But I’d like to know
If she took him
Where she promised we’d go.