An unknown poem by famed playwright Tennessee Williams was a fortuitous find for Henry I. Schvey, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences.
In 2004 in a bookstore in New Orleans, Schvey found the 17-line poem penciled into the back of a blue examination booklet Williams used for a Greek final as a student at WUSTL in 1937.
“It is clearly the work of a young man who doesn’t know his next move in life,” Schvey said of the poem.
Schvey’s find also was fortuitous for Williams’ fans, who otherwise might never have known of its existence. Titled “Blue Song,” the long-lost work had never been published — and possibly never read — until The New Yorker magazine ran it in December. The blue book now is part of the University Libraries Department of Special Collections.
Blue Song
I am tired
I am tired of speech and of action
If you should meet me upon a
street do not question me for
I can tell you only my name
and the name of the town I was
born in — But that is enough
It does not matter whether tomorrow
arrives anymore. If there is
only this night and after it is
morning it will not matter now.
I am tired. I am tired of speech
and of action. In the heart of me
you will find a tiny handful of
dust. Take it and blow it out
upon the wind. Let the wind have
it and it will find its way home.