"The Gymnast, High above the Ground"
The "light brigade" in the line "Waiting out this long light brigade" is a phrase from Tennyson's poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (I'm not sure if he coined the phrase, but his poem is probably the reason it's well-known). I don't think it's used the same way in the song though.About a year ago, I found an-other instance of the same phrase in "Cavalry Captain" from What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World. There, it's "we'll away on the light brigade." Again, I don't think it's used in the same sense in which Tennyson used it, but it is the same phrase.
"Song for Myra Goldberg"
This is just a minor point, but the line "Listen in as shin-kicked Jim relates his story sad" could be parsed two different ways, hinging on the "sad" in "Jim relates his story sad." It could be either inversion ("his story sad" instead of "his sad story") or a flat adverb ("Jim relates his story sad" instead of "Jim relates his story sadly"). Either it's a sad story or Jim tells it in a sad manner; it's grammatical hair-splitting, but there is a slight difference.
