No Provenance - Joanna Newsom

Allelu, allelu:

I have died happy

And lived to tell the tale to you

I have slept for forty years

And woke to find me gone

I woke safe and warm in your arms

In your arms, your arms

In your arms

Not informed of the natural law

Squatting, lordly, on a stool, in a stall

We spun gold clear out of straw

And, when our bales of bullion

Were stored

You burned me like a barn

I burned safe and warm in your arms

In your arms, your arms

I’m afraid of the Big Return

There’s a certain conversation lost

And that loss incurred

With nobody remaining

To register who had passed this way

In the night

In the middle of the night

(Negating their grace and their sight)

Till only I remember, or mark

How we had our talk:

We took our ride

So that there was no-one home

And the lights of Rome

Flickered and died

And, what’s more

I believe that you knew it, too;

I think you saw their flares

And kept me safely unawares

In your arms

Your arms, in your arms

The grass was tall, and strung with burrs

I essayed that high sashay which

In my mind, was my way;

You hung behind, in yours

Anyhow, she did not neigh

I do not know

What drew our eyes to hers;

That little black mare did not stir

Till I lay down in your arms

Poor old dirty little dog-size horse!

—

Swaying and wheezing

As a matter of course;

Swaying and wheezing

As a matter of pride

That poor old nag, not four palms wide

Had waited a long time

Coated in salt

Buckled like a ship run foul of the fence

And in the middle of the night

She’d sprung up

No provenance

Bearing the whites of her eyes

And you, with your

'Arrangement' with Fate

Nodded sadly at her lame assault

On that steady old gate

Her faultlessly etiolated fishbelly-face;

The muzzle of a ghost

And, pretty Johnny Appleseed

Via satellite feed

Tell us, who was it

That you then loved the most?

Pretty Johnny Appleseed

Leave a trail that leads

Straight back down to the farm

Lay me down

Safe and warm in your arms

In your arms