In California - Joanna Newsom

My heart became a drunken runt

On the day I sunk in this shunt

To tap me clean

Of all the wonder

And the sorrow I have seen

Since I left my home:

My home, on the old Milk Lake

Where the darkness does fall so fast

It feels like some kind of mistake

(just like they told you it would;

Just like the Tulgeywood)

When I came into my land

I did not understand:

Neither dry rot, nor the burn pile

Nor the bark-beetle, nor the dry well

Nor the black bear

But there is another

Who is a little older

When I broke my bone

He carried me up from the riverside

To spend my life

In spitting-distance

Of the love that I have known

I must stay here, in an endless eventide

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

Well, I have sown untidy furrows

Across my soul

But I am still a coward

Content to see my garden grow

So sweet & full

Of someone else’s flowers

But sometimes

I can almost feel the power

Sometimes I am so in love with you

(Like a little clock

That trembles on the edge of the hour

Only ever calling out «Cuckoo, cuckoo»)

When I called you

You, little one

In a bad way

Did you love me?

Do you spite me?

Time will tell if I can be well

And rise to meet you rightly

While, moving across my land

Brandishing themselves

Like a burning branch

Advance the tallow-colored

Walleyed deer

Quiet as gondoliers

While I wait all night, for you

In California

Watching the fox pick off my goldfish

From their sorry, golden state--

And I am no longer

Afraid of anything, save

The life that, here, awaits

I don’t belong to anyone

My heart is heavy as an oil drum

And I don’t want to be alone

My heart is yellow as an ear of corn

And I have torn my soul apart, from

Pulling artlessly with fool commands

Some nights

I just never go to sleep at all

And I stand

Shaking in my doorway like a sentinel

All alone

Bracing like the bow upon a ship

And fully abandoning

Any thought of anywhere

But home

My home

Sometimes I can almost feel the power

And I do love you

Is it only timing

That has made it such a dark hour

Only ever chiming out

«Cuckoo, cuckoo»?

My heart, I wear you down, I know

Gotta think straight

Keep a clean plate;

Keep from wearing down

If I lose my head

Just where am I going to lay it?

(For it has half-ruined me

To be hanging around

Here, among the daphne

Blooming out of the big brown;

I am native to it, but I’m overgrown

I have choked my roots

On the earth, as rich as roe

Here

Down in California.)