In 1979, Lester Bangs put these lyrics and this poem side by side.
It's nice to occasionally stop and look closely at a well-crafted lyric.
If I ventured in the slipstream
Between the viaducts of your dreams
Where the mobile steel rims crack
And the ditch and the backroads stop
Could you find me
Would you kiss my eyes
And lay me down
In silence easy
To be born again
Van Morrison
My heart of silk
is filled with lights,
with lost bells,
with lilies and bees.
I will go very far,
farther than those hills,
farther than the seas,
close to the stars,
to beg Christ the Lord
to give back the soul I had
of old, when I was a child,
ripened with legends,
with a feathered cap
and a wooden sword.
Federico Garcia Lorca
Have loved Madame George for years. I wonder what the rather spiffing Lorca sounds like with double bass accompaniment? Even better?
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, I don't think he really bettered this lyric. This verse from TB Sheets, just before, is almost as good:
ReplyDeleteNow Julie there ain't nothin' on my mind
More further away than what you're lookin' for,
I see the way they jump at me
Lord, from behind the door, and look into my eyes,
Your little star stuck innuendos,
Inadequacies, foreign bodies.
That's nice.
It's mostly about the sound with Van. In The Garden, from his later album, Avalon Sunset is a thing of beauty despite watered down lyrical content.