Po’ Boy

Introduction

The song is a mixture of darkness and humour. It’s largely concerned with the memories of the narrator triggered by a salesman knocking at the door. As a result we learn about the narrator’s wealthy background, his own impoverishment and his present relatively well-off existence. We discover, too, that he’s a criminal, probably a murderer, and that he’s almost certainly guilty of sexual assault. The song covers his anxiety, his attitude to social class, his work, and the part played in his life by marital and family relationships. The bleak atmosphere is relieved by the inclusion of three jokes.

As often is the case with Dylan, the song incorporates phrases from elsewhere – other songs, jokes and the novel “Confessions of a Yakuza” by Junichi Saga.¹ Curiously too the song is permeated with wording from the rhyme ‘One, two, buckle my shoe’.² While it may be that sources of the interpolated phrases are of little relevance, those from Saga imply that the narrator has a criminal background. This will be considered further below.

Memory

The title ‘Po’ Boy’ implies the song is about just one travelling salesman. In fact it would seem there are up to four. There’s the narrator’s father, who is described as ‘a traveling salesman’, the visiting salesman who features in the first verse and a second one (probably) who features in the last verse. And finally there’s the narrator himself.

What seems to happen is that the arrival of the salesman in the first verse causes the narrator to remember his own earlier life in the same job. This is indicated in the narrator’s question:

‘Poor boy, where you been?^’3

Since the lack of quotation marks in the printed version of the song implies the question is unspoken, the question is more likely to be a thought directed towards the narrator himself than one directed at the visitor. The narrator is implying it’s a long time since he himself had to go from door to door scraping a living. The curt, but unspoken, response:

 ‘I already tol’ you – won’t tell you again’

might be the sort of youthful response he’d have given to questioners in the past though it might also reflect his current irritation at being asked where his wife is.

There’s a similar ambiguity about the comforting:

‘Things will be all right by and by’.

This could be both solace offered by the narrator to himself in more impoverished salesman days but at the same time a sympathetic thought directed towards the salesman at the door. Reasons in support of the former will be given below.

The narrator goes on to say, apparently prompted by the earlier question ‘Where you been?’

‘Been working on the mainline …’

While ‘mainline‘ might suggest both drug running and – more literally – work on the railways, it seems to trigger another memory from an impoverished life as a travelling salesman:

‘Ridin’ first class trains – making the rounds
Tryin’ to keep from fallin’ between the cars’

Much of the rest of the song involves memories of that past life too. These include his time in Georgia and Florida, a cheap hotel, his family background, his gratitude to his uncle, a relationship and an ambition to own a house.

Fear and Wife’s Absence

The narrator is scared. This is apparent from the very first line in which he asks a salesman:

‘”For whom are you looking?”’

He’s putting on an act. The language – in particular the formal ‘For whom’ – is unnatural and would be particularly so for someone ‘working on the mainline’ if this is taken to mean he’s a navvy. Although he might just be attempting to emulate the style of the social class he wants to be associated with, it could equally be that he’s concerned to hide his true identity.

The salesman wants to speak with the narrator’s wife and once again the narrator behaves suspiciously:

‘”She’s busy in the kitchen cookin”’

Why doesn’t he fetch his wife? And if it really is inconvenient, why doesn’t he apologise before explaining? While it’s plausible that he’s telling the truth, it would seem that he’s covering something up.

Despite that, the narrator is prepared to pay more than the salesman’s asking price of three dollars:

 ‘Will you take four?’

Once again, however, the language register is suspiciously unnatural.

***

In the final verse the narrator is again the one who answers the knock at the door. Still there’s no evidence of a wife. And again he seems worried:

‘Who is it and where are you from?’

The questioning seems out of place. The narrator has no obvious need to know the answers to either question. The salesman’s jokey response:

‘”Freddy or not here I come”’

will likely have worried the narrator even more. Misinterpreted, ‘here I come’ could seem like a warning or a threat. It implies, as in hide-and-seek, that the addressee’s cover is about to be blown. The narrator is already worried by people ‘coming’. The event referred to in the opening words of the song,

 ‘Man comes to the door …’,

had brought about the narrator’s original defensive question ‘For whom are you looking?’

Crime

The narrator’s caginess may be related to criminality. That he is, or has been, involved in crime is suggested by the self-pitying phrase:

‘Police at your back’.

The nature of the crime is not made explicit. However, quotations from ‘Confessions of a Yakuza’ in verse seven make it likely that he’s a gangster, and the phrase ‘working on the mainline’ suggests involvement in drug trafficking. This would explain why, as we learn in verse six, he had to escape ‘them Georgia laws’; these are particularly harsh for some drug offences.⁴

If this is so, the comment:

‘The game is the same—it’s just on a different level’

would suggest that over time his status changed so that he ended up as gang leader. One possibility is that his fear of visitors is fear of reprisal by a rival gang member.

Given the possible criminal nature of his work, it’s fittingly ironic that he describes himself as ‘workin’ like the devil’.

Murders

The ‘devil’ may have been a role model in other respects.

The ‘Othello’ verse – the middle verse of the song – suggests that the narrator, like Othello in Shakespeare’s play, is jealous and that this has led him to murder his wife. Curiously, in the song it’s the other way round. Desdemona is the murderer:

‘Othello told Desdemona, “I’m cold, cover me with a blanket
By the way, what happened to that poison wine?” She says, “I gave it to you, you drank it”’

Applied to the narrator and his wife, it would be as if his wife has discovered the poison which was meant for her and poisoned him with it. If so, he’d have been hoist with his own petard.

Literally, of course, he has not been murdered. But as with the real Othello, whose uxoricide resulted in his own death, so the murder the narrator commits might result in his own demise. That would be what he fears every time there’s someone at the door. In reversing the Othello situation, he’s convincing himself that his wife is indirectly responsible for her own murder – perhaps in that her imagined adulterous behaviour towards him has induced him to commit it.

Support for this view comes from two  lines of self-encouragement the narrator indulges in:

‘Poor boy, never say die
Things will be all right by and by’

The first in specifically mentioning death (‘die’), if taken literally might indicate a wish to avoid capital punishment which some states still have. The second seems to echo the use of the phrase ‘Bye and bye’ in the song of that name which also involves the murder of a woman.

The narrator may also have murdered other people – not surprising if he is in fact a gangster. The line immediately following the Othello reference,

‘Poor boy, layin’ ‘em straight’,

would seem to refer to a memory of laying out dead bodies – plural. While this might just have been something he did for his uncle, an undertaker, in the context of poisoning it suggests multiple murders.

A victim early in life might have been his own mother since he refers to her having died. The motive could have been her affair with a travelling salesman which resulted in his own birth and perhaps an unhappy childhood. This might in part explain his use of ‘love’ in the line

‘Time and love has branded me with its claws’.

It would refer to his mother’s unwise liaison.

Sexual assault

The primary meaning behind

‘Time and love has branded me with its claws’,

though, is that is that he’s suffered through no fault of his own. Additionally, ‘Time’ might imply he’s been in prison. Either way the line seems to indicate a refusal to accept responsibility for failure both in life generally and in romantic relationships. In the case of relationships he’s clearly being disingenuous. This is made apparent by his declaring

‘All I know is that I’m thrilled by your kiss
I don’t know any more than this’.

While this might seem to be just an innocent expression of how enthralled he is, it can also be seen as his rehearsing a response to an anticipated accusation.  Given the context, we can assume the accusation would be one of sexual assault. And we can assume he’s almost certainly guilty. That this is so is made apparent in three ways. The first is that he’s anticipating an accusation at all. The second is his needing to rehearse a denial – and not just in advance, but in advance of any accusation even having been made. And the third is that, were his denial likely to be accepted, there’d be no need to combine it with flattery.

Race

There’s a further possible reason why the narrator might have murdered his wife. It’s that his father, the travelling salesman, seems to have been black. While there’s nothing explicit to indicate this, there are a number of hints.

One reason for thinking the narrator might be black is the ‘Othello’ reference. Othello was black. Significantly his wife, Desdemona, was white. If the narrator’s own marriage was racially mixed, it might (directly, or indirectly as in the play) account for the mental state which leads him to his wife’s murder.

Another reason for thinking he’s black is that the song’s title ‘Po’ Boy’ seems to be in imitation of the black American accent.

Then the line

‘Poor boy, dressed in black’

might be an allusion to skin colour. (This might be the case even though it could also be a reference to funeral attire; the narrator we can assume has had to attend his mother’s funeral and in a professional capacity attend funerals organised by his uncle.)

As noted already, what’s significant about the Othello/Desdemona relationship in the song is that the roles are reversed. In the play Othello murders Desdemona. In the song it’s the other way round. This reflects another reversal. In the song Othello expects to dominate his white wife. Not only does he expect his wife to pour his drinks for him, but he issues her with orders:

‘”I’m cold, cover me with a blanket’

While these things are in themselves a possible cause of tension, the tension would be exacerbated if the white woman were sufficiently racist to resent being made subservient to a black man.

That the narrator himself has the attitude of the Othello character is apparent from the first verse in which the narrator expects his wife to be a traditional housewife. She is the one who cooks the meals and she’s expected not to leave the kitchen even when someone asks for her. The salesman is selling goods which he expects to interest her and, although the narrator buys one, his wife is to have no say in what he buys.

Ambition

The narrator seems to have started his adult life poor. It’s unclear why, although we’re told that from an early age he was without either father or mother. His mother’s background was wealthy, though, and the uncle who looked after him had his own business. We can speculate that his early impoverishment was linked to a surly attitude:

‘I already tol’ you –won’t tell you again’

Prior to becoming a travelling salesman, he may have started out working in his uncle’s funeral business. This would explain why he remembers being:

‘… dressed in black’

if we’re to take that literally. The phrase:

‘… layin’ ‘em straight’

would refer to laying out the dead.

The narrator was clearly dissatisfied with his life as a salesman. It’s ironic that while poverty requires him to take on the danger of riding between the carriages of trains, these are ‘first class trains’. The mention of this suggests resentment that others can afford what he can’t. Later, presumably while working in a restaurant, he again shows resentment:

‘Washin’ them dishes, feedin’ them swine’

The swine might literally be pigs. Equally likely, though, ‘swine’ could indicate what he thinks of those who can afford culinary luxuries which he can’t and which he has to serve them. In the light of that it’s ironic that he expects his wife to remain working in the kitchen when the visitor asks to speak to her.

The resentment of the better off is also ironic since his aim is to achieve a similar wealthy status:

‘Build ya a house out of mortar and bricks’

A house is what he eventually acquires – and it’s presumably of a reasonable size since it includes a store, and the front door is at a distance from the kitchen. He also affects the speech of those he aspires to be like when he asks with absurd formality:

‘’”For whom are you looking?”’

Contrast ‘where you been?’ – a more plebeian register which comes naturally to him when he’s addressing himself.

Whether his work has improved is unclear. He’s been ‘workin’ like the devil’ and the work itself is:

‘… just on a different level’,

the word ‘just’ implying there’s not much difference. Whether he’s telling the truth is another matter. When he claims to have been reduced to

‘Pickin’ up the cherries fallin’ off the plate’,

it’s noticeable that it’s cherries rather than, say, crumbs which he picks up. He may not have been quite as badly off as he’s making out.

***

The narrator’s ambition for a better life is indicated unconsciously on several occasions by his choice of language. References to different levels figure throughout. His new work is:

‘… up on a different level’.

He was:

‘… pickin’ up sticks’,

and

‘pickin’ up cherries’

– each perhaps indicating an attempt at self-improvement. On the other hand he was forced to

‘Call down to room service’

but only so that they’d

‘Send up a room’.

And he tried to avoid:

‘… fallin’ …’

 from his precarious position between first class carriages.

And whereas at one point his use of ‘beyond the twinklin’ stars’ seems to indicate how out of control he’d felt in his earlier life, in the final verse he imagines being:

’… ‘neath the stars that shine’

– in other words dead and buried, the ultimate failure. This hasn’t come about yet but, whenever there’s an unexpected visitor he’s anticipating it. Despite that, by the end of the song the darkness of the narrator’s life, represented by the night sky and the constant references to death, has been somewhat relieved. The stars are no longer just fitfully twinkling; they now ‘shine’, indicating a steadiness which the earlier ‘twinkling’ does not have.

Conclusion

The song gives us an idea of the narrator’s life and character through his own thoughts. Through them we learn about the different stages of his life – his parentage, upbringing, work and eventual success in throwing off poverty thus becoming more like his mother than his father. We learn that he was surly in his youth, that he had a series of menial jobs, that he became involved in organised crime, and that his crimes included sexual assault and possibly one or more murders. We also find out that he blames circumstances for his misfortunes, sometimes justifiably, but never blames himself. There’s an indication, too, that he exaggerates his misfortune. Despite all this he has a wry sense of humour and can be both grateful and kind.

While the narrator’s attempt to acquire a lifestyle in line with that of his mother rather than his father is successful materially, his life is overshadowed by darkness. It’s associated with night, the gloom of a hotel room, black clothing, the death of his mother, a funeral parlour and the colour of Othello’s skin. Relief from the darkness is represented by twinkling and, ultimately, shining stars. Nevertheless the darkness remains, not least in the form of fear. The narrator seems to be constantly afraid that his crimes or enemies are going to catch up with him.

Notes

1. The Guardian quotes the following passage from Saga’s novel: ‘My mother…was the daughter of a wealthy farmer…died when I was 11…my father was a travelling salesman…I never met him. [My uncle] was a nice man, I won’t forget him (pages 57-58)’ The Guardian 10.7.2003
2. Related to ‘One, Two, Buckle My Shoe’ there’s ‘”Three dollars … Will you take four?”’, ‘‘Knockin on the door’, ‘Pickin’ up sticks’, and ‘Layin’ em straight’ (which replaces ‘Close the gate’ in one version of the rhyme). Other words which figure in both the rhyme and the song are ‘black’, ‘kitchen’ and ‘plate’.
3. Since it is reminiscent of the repeated question ‘Where have you been, my blue-eyed son?’ in ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ where it can be interpreted as wanting to know what appalling things the son has witnessed, the question ‘poor boy, where you been?’ might also be taken as implying that the addressee’s experiences have been bad.
4. I’m assuming this was also true at the unspecified time the song is set: ‘Few states are as strict with laws surrounding drugs as Georgia. In Georgia, penalties are severe and range dependent on A) the nature of the offense (possession of drugs, intent to distribute or sell drugs, or trafficking drugs) and B) the specific drug you are being prosecuted for’ (Bixon Law, 5 May 2021, accessed 28.7.23)

4.8.23 ‘Sexual assault’ section added and minor adjustments made.