3 Al Purdy's

歌詞

spoken: Stand in the swaying boxcar doorway Moving east away from the sunset and After a while the eyes digest a country and The belly perceives a mapmaker's vision In dust and dirt on the face and hands here Its smell drawn deep through the nostrils down To the lungs and spurts through the bloodstream Campaigns in the lower intestine and Chants love songs to the kidneys After a while there is no arrival and No departure possible any more You are where you were always going And the shape of home is under your fingernails ... I'm a product of some parents of the sort that shouldn't breed Didn't get much schooling past learning how to read Got the poetry bug in some forgotten institution When first I did embark on this career of destitution The beauty of language set a hook in my soul Me like a bread crust soaking soup from a bowl You can call this a rant but I declare I declaim Al Purdy's poems are the name of the game The winds of fate blow where they will I'll give you three Al Purdy's for a twenty dollar bill Pokers in the counting house counting out the bacon Matter's getting darker in the universe they're making They love the little guy until they get a better offer With the dollar getting smaller they can fit more in their coffers And the doings on the corner neither sung nor seen They're circling the shopping carts at Sherbourne and Queen I resemble that assembly but I'm not the same And Al Purdy's poems are the name of my game The winds of fate blow where they will I'll give you three Al Purdy's for a twenty dollar bill You can spit on the prophet but respect the word I've got some lines I want to spin you that you ought to have heard The winds of fate blow where they will I'll give you three Al Purdy's for a twenty dollar bill The winds of fate blow where they will I'll give you three Al Purdy's for a twenty dollar bill spoken: And after the essence of everything Had exchanged itself for words and became Another being and could even be summoned From the far distance we chanted a spell of names And we said "Mountain be our friend" And we said "River guard us from enemies" And we said what it seemed the gods themselves Might say if we had dreamed them and they Had dreamed us from their high places And they spoke to us in the forest From the river and the mountain And the mouths of the ochre-painted dead Had speech again and the waters Spoke and the speech had words And our children remembered