Late For The Sky

The imagery is just as careful as the structure. Especially poignant is the idea that although “[his]camera” took the picture, it is now the picture's turn to take the poet's image—or more accurately, his heart. Somewhere in the juxtaposition of “childish laughter” and “just a trace of sorrow,” Browne sees a record of his own movement into adult life. He has found all the pain of regret, of the irony of time, that Eliot details in “La Figlia che Piange,” which begins:

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair—
Lean on a garden urn—
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair—
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise—
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes

The third track, “Farther On,” is the real masterpiece of the four—less hooky, with a more sustained lyrical elegance. The musical structure is more obviously hymn-like, set in rhymed quatrains, a plodding anthem of heroic sorrow in which Browne looks back on his life with an increasing sense of realism. As youthful dreams fade, “The angels are older / They know not to wait up for the sun.”

The fourth track, “The Late Show,” brings these ideas down to street level with a renewed sense of hope for adult love. Maturity is still essentially painful for Browne, both in its hypocrisy and frustration: “No one ever talks about their feelings anyway / Without dressing them in dreams and laughter / I guess it's just too painful otherwise.” But Browne holds onto the possibility that he might yet “stumble onto someone real.” Somehow he has to recognize himself for who he is, in a sense to repent: “When your own emptiness is all that's getting through / There comes a point when you're not sure why you're still talking— / I passed that point long ago.” Passing that point—admitting that you're tired, and that you don't have much to say—is the key to the renewal of dreams.

At the end of “The Late Show,” Browne triumphally announces the rebirth of his dreams. Sorrow still belongs to these adults, but by acknowledging it, they are able to move on:

It's like you're standing in the window
Of a house nobody lives in
And I'm sitting in a car across the way;
It's an early model Chevrolet,
It's a warm and windy day,
You go and pack your sorrow,
The trash man comes tomorrow,
Leave it at the curb and we'll just roll away.

So before you write off Jackson Browne along with pink wine and bell bottoms, think again. On at least a few of his early albums, he produced remarkable poetry. And that's not to mention the unforgettable melodies that go with them.