I Feel Like Midnight

by Clive James and Pete Atkin

I feel like midnight
And whether a new day
Will ever dawn
Is just a guess

I see by starlight
The long road from the day
That I was born
To this address

And I look at where you slept
And I taste the tears you wept
And you're here again except
I feel like midnight

I feel like midnight
And you are here again
To mock me with a smile
Each time I say

I feel like midnight
And the only chance I had
To rest a while
I threw away

Give me a break
Give me the break of day
I feel like midnight
I feel like midnight
I feel like midnight

Note (from Collected Poems)

John Garfield says the title line in the movie Force of Evil, which Abraham Polonsky both wrote and directed. After refusing to testify before HUAC, Polonsky was blacklisted and didn’t return to directing until Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here. A Marxist until the end, Polonsky, when Elia Kazan was given a lifetime achievement Academy Award, said that somebody ought to shoot him on the night, so as to liven the proceedings up. Kazan had sung to the committee and Polonsky never did, so it was hard not to admire one of them more than the other. Polonsky had, on the other hand, proselytized all his life on behalf of one of the most horrible regimes in history. But he could write, and there is seldom any real substitute for that.