Richard Fariña (1937-1966)

Richard Fariña was a writer and folksinger whose name is now inextricably linked to the early ’60s folk scene, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez. In his early 20s he frequented Greenwich Village and met and married Carolyn Hester, a folksinger just beginning to find a little success. (Fariña was alledgedly present when Hester recorded her third album in September 1961, accompanied on harmonica by a very young Bob Dylan.) Traveling in Europe with Hester, Fariña met and apparently fell hard for Mimi Baez (Joan Baez’s sister), at that time only fifteen years old. Hester soon divorced Fariña and he later married Mimi in 1963 when she was seventeen. Fariña wrote a comic novel titled Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, which was published by Random House, and has since become somewhat of a cult classic. On April 30, 1966, just two days after the book’s publication, on his wife Mimi’s twenty-first birthday, Fariña was killed in a motorcycle accident. Reflections in a Crystal Wind is one of his better-known songs. Pack Up Your Sorrows was co-written by Pauline Marden (sister of Joan and Mimi) and is probably best known by most people from the version sung beautifully (as all her songs are) by Judy Collins.



Reflections in a Crystal Wind

Reflections in a Crystal Wind

If there’s a way to say I’m sorry,
perhaps I’ll stay another evening beside your door,
and watch the moon rise inside your window
where jewels are falling, and flowers weeping, and strangers laughing,
because you’re dreaming that I have gone.

And if I don’t know why I’m going,
perhaps I’ll wait beside the pathway where no one’s coming,
and count the questions I turned away from,
or closed my eyes to, or had no time for, or passed right over,
because the answers would shame my pride.

I’ve heard them say the word “forever,”
but I don’t know if words have meaning
when they are promised in fear of losing what can’t be borrowed,
or lent in blindness, or blessed by pageantry, or sold by preachers,
while you’re still walking your separate way.

Sometimes we bind ourselves together,
and seldom know the harm in binding
the only feeling that cries for freedom
and needs unfolding and understanding,
and time for holding a simple mirror with one reflection to call your own.

If there’s an end to all our dreaming,
perhaps I’ll go while you’re still standing beside your door,
and I’ll remember your hands encircling a bowl of moonstones,
a lamp of childhood, a robe of roses,
because your sorrows were still unborn.




       




Pack Up Your Sorrows

No use cryin’, talkin’ to a stranger
Namin’ the sorrow you’ve seen
Too many sad times, too many bad times
Nobody knows what you mean

      But if somehow you could pack up your sorrows
      And give them all to me
      You would lose them, I know how to use them
      Give them all to me

No use ramblin’, walkin’ in the shadows
Trailin’ a wanderin’ star
No one beside you, no one to hide you
Nobody knows where you are

      But if somehow you could pack up your sorrows
      And give them all to me
      You would lose them, I know how to use them
      Give them all to me

No use gamblin’, running’ in the darkness
Lookin’ for spirit that’s free
Too many wrong times, too many long times
Nobody knows what you see

      But if somehow you could pack up your sorrows
      And give them all to me
      You would lose them, I know how to use them
      Give them all to me

No use roamin’, lyin’ by the roadside
Seekin’ a satisfied mind
Too many highways, too many byways
And nobody’s walkin’ behind

      But if somehow you could pack up your sorrows
      And give them all to me
      You would lose them, I know how to use them
      Give them all to me