Folk Singers

"And I shall get to know you In these lifetimes In awe and wonder On down through the years The nighttime angel spreads her wings around me I feel the silence And my doubts are cleared."

"I can hear her heart beat from a thousand miles And the heavens open every time she smiles And when I come to her that's where I belong Yet I'm running to her like a river's song."

"Well let them take you for a clown And they're bound to bring you down. You got to make it through the world if you can. Think they're doing you wrong But you got here on your own. You got to make it through the world if you can."

"In the land of a thousand dances, I dance with you. I was out I was taking my chances When dreams came true When you came into my dream Like from a whisper to a scream."

"From the dark end of the street To the bright side of the road We’ll be lovers once again on the Bright side of the road"

"And when that foghorn blows, I will be coming home, When that foghorn blows, I wanna hear it, I don't have to fear it, And I wanna rock your gypsy soul, Just like way back in the days of old, And magnificently we will fold Into the mystic."

"Come here my love And I will lift my spirits high for you I'd like to fly away and spend a day or two Just contemplating the fields and leaves and talking about nothing Just layin' down in shades of effervescent, effervescent odors And shades of time and tide."

"Hi-ho, silver! Tit for tat! And I love you for that."

"When the ghost comes round at midnight Well you both can have some fun He can drive you mad, he can make you sad He can keep you from the sun When they take him down, he'll be both safe and sound And the hand does fit the glove And no matter what they tell you, There's good and evil in everyone."

"A great Irish poet"

"Linden Arden stole the highlights With one hand tied behind his back. Loved the morning sun and whiskey Ran like water in his veins. Loved to go to church on Sunday, Even though he was a drinkin' man. When the boys came to San Francisco, They were looking for his life. But he found out where they were drinking, Met them face to face outside. Cleaved their heads off with a hatchet, Lord, he was a drinkin' man. And when somebody tried to get above him, He just took the law into his own hands. Linden Arden stole the highlights, And they put his fingers through the glass. He had heard all those stories many, many times before, And he did not care, nor know, to ask. And he loved the little children like they were his very own. You say 'Someday, he may get lonely, Now he's livin', livin' with a gun.'"

"And there's only one man knows way to go, And we say 'Geronimo.'"

"Some people spend their time just runnin' round in circles Always chasing some exotic bird I prefer to spend some time just listening for that special something That I've never ever heard I like a new song to sing, another show or somewhere entirely different to be But baby you make me feel so free."

"Why did you leave America? Why did you let me down? And now that things seem better off, Why do you come around? You know I just can't see you now In my new world crystal ball. You know I just can't free you now, That's not my job at all."

"Did you ever hear about the great deception? Well the plastic revolutionaries take the money and run. Have you ever been down to love city? Where they rip you off with a smile, And it don't take a gun."

"Leaves of brown they fall to the ground. And it's here, over there leaves around. Shut the door, dim the lights and relax. What is more, your desire or the facts?"

"Fair play to you, Kilarney's lakes are so blue, And the architecture I'm taking in with my mind, So fine."

"No Guru, no method, no teacher Just you and I and nature And the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost In the garden wet with rain."

"Love is not a symptom of time. Time is just a symptom of love"

"Joy! Again, around—a pause, a sound—a song: a way a lone a last a loved a long. A cave, a grave, a day: arise, ascend. (Areion, Rharian; go free and graze. Amen.) A shore, a tide, unmoored—a sight, abroad: A dawn, unmarked, undone, undarked (a god). No time. No flock. No chime, no clock. No end. White star, white ship—Nightjar, transmit: transcend!"

"So it would seem to be true: when cruel birth debases, we forget. When cruel death debases, we believe it erases all the rest that precedes. But stand brave, life-liver, bleeding out your days in the river of time. Stand brave: time moves both ways"

"Hey little leaf, lying on the ground— now you're turning slightly brown! Why don't you come back on the tree, turn the color green the way you ought to be?"

"In martial wind, and in clarion rain, we minced into battle, wincing in pain; not meant for walking, backs bound in twine: not angel or devil, but level, in time."

"Now the towns and forests, highways and plains, fall back in circles like an emptying drain. And I won't come round this way again, where the lonely wind abides, and you will not take my heart, alive."

"And in an infinite regress: Tell me, why is the pain of birth lighter borne than the pain of death?"

"I know we must abide each by the rules that bind us here: the divers, and the sailors, and the women on the pier."

"Recall the word you gave: to count your way across the depths of this arid world, where you would yoke the waves, and lay a bed of shining pearls! I dream it every night: the ringing of the pail, the motes of sand dislodged, the shucking, quick and bright; the twinned and cast-off shells reveal a single heart of white."

"lists of sins and solemn vows don't make you any friends."

"And never will I wed. I'll hunt the pearl of death to the bottom of my life, and ever hold my breath, till I may be the diver's wife."

"As the day is long, so the well runs dry, and we came to see Time is taller than Space is wide. And we bade goodbye to the Great Divide: found unlimited simulacreage to colonize!"

"All we saw was that Time is taller than Space is wide. That's why we got bound to a round desert island, 'neath the sky where our sailors have gone. Have they drowned, in those windy highlands? Highlands away, my John."

"But inasmuch as that light is loaned, insofar as we’ve borrowed bones, must every debt now be repaid in star-spotted, sickle-winged night raids"

"In the folds and the branches, somewhere, out there, I was only just born into open air. Now hush, little babe. You don’t want to be down in the trenches, remembering with me, where you will not mark my leaving, and you will not hear my parting song. Nor is there cause for grieving. Nor is there cause for carrying on."

"Above them, parades mark the passing of days through parks where pale colonnades arch in marble and steel, where all of the Twenty Thousand attending your foot fall (and the Cause that they died for) are lost in the idling birdcalls, and the records they left are cryptic at best, lost in obsolescence"

"The tap of hangers, swaying in the closet — unburdened hooks and empty drawers — and everywhere I tried to love you is yours again, and only yours."

"It is too short — the day we are born, we commence with our dying."

"Coats of bouclé, jacquard and cashmere; cartouche and tweed, all silver shot — and everything that could remind you of how easy I was not."

"In December of that year, the word came down that she was here. The days grew shorter. I was sure, if she came 'round, I’d hold my ground. I'd endure. But they'd alluded to a change that came to pass, and Spring, deranged, weeping grass and sleepless, broke herself upon my windowglass. And I could barely breathe, for seeing all the splintered light that leaked her fissures, fleeing, launched in flight: unstaunched daylight, brightly bleeding, bleached the night with dawn, deleting, in that high sun, after our good run, when the spirit bends beneath knowing it must end."

"It does not suffice for you to say I am a sweet girl, or to say you hate to see me sad because of you. It does not suffice, to merely lie beside each other, as those who love each other do."

"I may have changed, it's hard to gauge Time won't account for how I've aged Would that I could tie your lying tongue Who says that leaving keeps you young."

"In this life, who did you love, beneath the drifting ashes, beneath the sheeting banks of air that barrenly bore our rations?"

"And, for the sake of that pit of snakes, for whom did you allay your shyness, and spend all your mercy, and madness, and grace, in a day, beneath the bending cypress?"

"Driven through by her own sword, summer died last night, alone."

"Hung from the underbelly of the Earth While the stars skid away below Gormless and brakeless; gravel-loose Falling silent as gavels in the snow."

"What’s redacted will repeat, and you cannot learn that you burn when you touch the heat, so we touch the heat, and we cut facsimiles of love and death (just separate holes in sheets where you cannot breathe, and you cannot see)."

"This is the song for Baby Birch. I will never know you. And at the back of what we've done, there is that knowledge of you."

"held her there, kicking and mewling, upended, unspooling, unsung and blue; told her "wherever you go, little runaway bunny, I will find you." And then she ran, as they're liable to do."

"And if you come and see me, you will upset the order. You cannot come and see me, for I set myself apart. But when you come and see me, in California, you cross the border of my heart."

"But it can make you feel over, and old (Lord, you know it's a shame), when I only want for you to pull over, and hold me, till I can't remember my own name."

"We are blessed and sustained by what is not said"