There is something deeply affecting, deeply haunting in this song by Regina Spektor.
How can one song concurrently serve as a love story, lament, protest and yet reveal an exquisitely controlled pain?
~
"The Sword and the Pen"
Don't let me get out of this kiss
Don't let me say what I say
The things that scare us today
what if they happen someday
Don't let me out of your arms
For now
What if the sword kills the pen
What if the god kills the man
And if he does it with love
Well then it's death from above
And death from above is still a death
I don't want to live without you
I don't want to live without you
I don't want to live
I don't want to live
Without you
For those who still can recall
The desperate colors of fall
The sweet caresses of May
Only in poems remain
No one recites them these days
For the shame
So what if nothing is safe
So what if no one is saved
No matter how sweet
No matter how brave
What if each to his own lonely grave
I don't want to live without you
I don't want to live without you
I don't want to live
I don't want to live
Without you
1 comment:
A deeply moving song; it rings very true. It expresses the desperate fears of one who knows that death is inevitable, that time is fleeting, and that those we love are lost. The emotion it evokes is reminiscent of one of my favorite poems, Dirge Without Music, by Edna St. Vincent Millay:
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
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