Tom Waits on homelessness

Tom Waits appears in an episode of the Italian documentary series Il fattore umano [The human fate]: “Ultima fermata,” a report on homelessness in the American south. He talks, sings “Tom Traubert’s Blues,” a bit of “The Fall of Troy,” a bit of “What Keeps Mankind Alive?” (Brecht-Weill), and reads from his poem Seeds on Hard Ground, published as a chapbook in 2011 and reprinted in 2025, with all proceedings going to organizations providing services to homeless people.

You can watch the episode (it’s all in English) at YouTube. (At the series website it has Italian subtitles.) You can read Seeds on Hard Ground at Flickr. (That’s apparently with Waits’s approval, because his website has a link.)

Related reading
All OCA Tom Waits posts (Pinboard)

[Waits’s website gives the episode title as “The Last Ride,” but I think the title is properly translated as “Last Stop.” Waits is an advocate for the homeless; there’s no reason to think he has ever been homeless himself.]