Arnold Schnabel delves into new territory

The Olney Times had been printing a poem a week by Arnold Schnabel for twenty-five years by the time this stunning sonnet appeared in the issue for August 31, 1963, and in all that time Arnold had never before published a poem that could conceivably be called a love poem.

Better late than never.

This poem can safely be assumed to address his new (and apparently first) inamorata, the Bohemian jeweler Elektra.

(Available for download as read by the noted actor and Schnabelian, Mr. Brad Pitt; all proceeds to go to the Arnold Schnabel Society, in aid of their continued work in the collection and preservation of the Arnold Schnabel Archives.)

You Asked For It

You asked me to write you a poem; oh
Well, luckily for me you didn’t say
That it had to be a good one, and so
I’ll mention your eyes, not as bright as day
Nor dark as the night, nor deep as the sea,
But deep and dark and bright enough for me
To swim in, to dream in, and to live in;
And then your skin, and what it has given
To someone who once wished to leave his own;
And your laughter that awakened the clown
Inside a scarecrow made of flesh and bone,
So that he sits now putting these words down
On paper: a trite, embarrassing mess,
But perhaps not entirely meaningless.

(Kindly turn to the right hand side of this page for links to many other classic poems by Arnold Schnabel as well as to our ongoing serialization of his sprawling memoir Railroad Train to Heaven.)