2.9 Death Shall Have No Bananas

...A Conspiracy involving St Paul, Dylan Thomas, Maurizio Cattelan, and banana lovers everywhere

George Formby once sang “I don’t care for muffins, I don’t like buttered scones, but I like bananas, because they have no bones.”

There is something inherently funny about bananas. People still talk about their skins as something that you might trip up on, like silent film stars, and characters in the pages of the Beano and the Dandy and similar comics did years ago.

Perhaps those types of joke are very old fashioned. In these modern times maybe it is the phallic shape of a banana, that gets the most laughs. Perhaps the phallic shape has always got the most laughs. Whatever causes the mirth, bananas are comical in a way that other fruits can only aspire to be.

The most popular banana based comedy song of all time is undoubtedly Yes! We Have no Bananas, written in 1923 by Frank Silver and Irving Cohn, who probably retired on the profits of it, as nothing else in their output ever achieved such great heights. It is another one of those songs that still lives on in the memories of people born long after it was written or regularly performed.

Frank Silver used to buy his fruit from a stand run by a Greek merchant who had the quirk of starting every sentence he spoke with the word “yes”. Some blight had affected the supply of bananas, and when people asked him for them, he would reply with the magical phrase which became the song’s title.

There is a rhythm to the seven syllables of the title. Seven syllables! It would fit snugly into the middle of a haiku -

Shortages abound
Yes, we have no bananas
Have a pear instead

Maybe its the poet in me, but sometimes the rhythm of a phrase comes through to me loud and clear, and I can match it to a musical phrase almost instantly.¹ I’m not boasting, for all I know everyone may be blessed (or cursed) with the same skill. It can give me a delight of recognition when it happens, but it can also be intrusive, like a form of musical Tourettes, and threaten to ruin the moment.

Like it did when I was watching my good friend Mick Jenkinson² recite some Dylan Thomas at an event once, giving a rousing rendition of Death Shall have no Dominion. As soon as I heard the first line (which is also the title) I recognised the same seven syllable rhythm of Yes, We Have no Bananas! How could I take the poem seriously after that? Like I said above, bananas are funny. Had the line reminded me of another piece of fruit based music, I might have put it out of my head, but not bananas.

The title for Death Shall Have no Dominion came from St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans - Chapter 6 Verses 7-11

For he that is dead is freed from sin
Now if we be dead with Christ, 
we believe that we shall also live with him:.
Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; 
death hath no more dominion over him
For in that he died, he died unto sin once: 
but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord

Is it possible that Thomas subconsciously had the Silver/Cohn composition playing on the gramophone of his mind at the time?³ The poem was written only ten years later than the song. He would have known it. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am. Its obvious!

Maybe it goes even deeper than that. Perhaps Silver and Cohn, or the Greek fruit stall holder had been subconsciously thinking about the writing of St Paul when the phrase came to be lodged in their minds.

Think about that the next time that you see someone eating a banana. Are they making a statement, like those people who use the fish symbol as a bumper sticker on their cars to proclaim their Christianity? Are they really saying “Death Shall have no Dominion?”

Think about it the next time you eat a banana. Are you partaking of the body of Christ through some process of transubstantiation? If so - which part?

The artist Maurizio Cattelan is famed for fastening a banana inside a frame with duct tape and selling it for $120,000. Was he divinely inspired? He sold a second edition for the same price, but as far as I know failed to realise the asking price of $150,000 for version 3. People have actually eaten the banana in question and said that it was delicious.

It doesn’t matter if the banana is eaten. Nor that said banana isn’t impervious to death. Death has no dominon over Cattelan’s artwork. Once it is past its prime, the keeper of the piece is entitled to replace the banana with a fresh one. It is the concept of the piece that is the art.

Thats bananas!

Isn’t it?

Once I had made the connection between Dylan Thomas and the banana song, I had to write something entitled Death Shall Have No Bananas. To do so, I had to listen to the Silver/Coen original, and see if I could alter the lyrics to fit the words. There is an old 78 of Billy Jones singing it on Youtube and Spike Jones and his City Slickers recorded a version (with a strange poetic opening in) 1951. I used a backing track to perfect my first draft and recorded my own version , but have since played with the words to make it scan better.

In order to get the poetry to match the song format, I had to add some altered lines from another well known Thomas poem, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”. - perhaps one of the finest villanelles ever written, and thats no mean feat. It is easy to churn out Just another Fucking Villanelle but very difficult to produce a good one.

It is easy to write just another blasted parody poem - and that’s exactly what I have done here.

Death Shall Have No Bananas

There once was a Welsh poet 
who liked to write of death
Forever writing odes about 
drawing your final breath
He often said it was a crime, 
it really wasn’t right
For anyone to go gently 
into that good night

He’d tell you:

Death shall have no dominion
Shall have no dominion today
Dead men all end up nude
And it’s really quite rude
To have your bones picked clean that way
They go mad and yet remain sane
Sink in the sea and bob up again
And death shall have no dominion
Shall have no dominion today

Wise dying men know dark is right, 
“Turn out the lights” they say
Good men cry “How awf’lly bright 
I might have danced that day”
Wild men catch the sun in flight 
then grieve it on its way
And grave men’s eyes blaze at the sight 
like meteors shining gay

They’ll tell you

Death shall have no dominion
Shall have no dominion today
Under the sea the dead aren’t winded
Even though their life’s rescinded
And they suffer awful tortures every day
When unicorns run them through
And their faith has snapped into two
Death shall have no dominion
Shall have no dominion today

And death shall have no dominion.
Shall have no dominion today
Waves crash to the seashore 
And flowers will grow no more
Where rain filled skies are grey 
Spare me the gory details 
The dead won’t stay dead as nails
because death shall have no dominion
Shall have no dominion today

Lawdy, Lawdy...
Shall have no Dominion today

1. I’ve been dabbling in watercolour painting - quite ineffectively because the poet in me keeps seeping through and wanting more of my attention than the painter in me. The names of those colours bring out my musical syllable spotting talent. Alizarine Crimson calls the Beatles to mind singing Paperback Writer. (mainly because I was told it was called alzarine crimson, before I ever read it properly, but it still scans - just. Burnt Sienna is (predictably) Oh, Vienna, and Cerilian Blue is (more surprisingly) I Am What I Am

2. Mick has recently released his first full Collection of Poetry “Iron Harvest” It is available on both Amazon and Waterstones.

3. Being a twenty first century man, I have a streaming music account in my mind which is usually on shuffle. It occasionally gets stuck for a while on one track or another, but not often for too long. It must have been hard for Dylan Thomas having had to deal with a mental gramophone player, and an imaginary box of heavy 78s.