A Wild Being from Birth - Lou Reed

Rowena:

A wild being from birth

My spirit spurns control

Wondering the wide earth searching for my soul

While all the world is chiding

In visions of the dark night

I have had a waking dream

A holy dream

A holy dream

A waking dream of life and light

That cheered me as a lovely beam

A lonely spirit guiding

With a ray turned back upon the past

While I aghast

Sit motionless through the misty night

Dimly peering at what once shone bright

Peeking wariy at what shone afar

What could there be more purely bright

In Truth’s day-star?

Poe:

In the consideration of the faculties

And impulses of the human soul

In consideration of our arrogance

Our radical, primitive, irreducible arrogance of reason

We have all overlooked the propensity

We saw no need for it The paradoxical something which we may call perverseness

A mobile without motive

Through its promptings, we act without comprehensible object

Induction would have brought phrenology to admit this

We act for the reason we should not

For certain minds this is absolutely irresistible

The conviction of the wrong or impolicy of an action

Is often the unconquerable force

It is a primitive impulse

Elementary

The overwhelming tendency to do Wrong for the wrong’s sake

This impels us to its persecutions

Oh holy dream

We persist in acts

Because we feel that we should not persist in them

This is the combativeness of phrenology

Rowena:

We have a task before us which must be speedily performed

We know it will be ruinous to delay

Trumpet-tongued, the important crisis of our life calls

We glow

Poe:

We are consumed with eagerness to commence work

Yet a shadow flits across the brain

The impulse increases to a wish

The wish to a desire

The desire to uncontrollable longing

And the longing in defiance of all consequences is indulged

We put off all until tomorrow

Rowena:

We tremble with the violence of the conflict within us The definite with the indefinite

The substance with the shadow

There is no answer except that we feel perverse

The shadow prevails

Our energy returns

We will commit now

We will labor now

Oh holiest of dreams

But it is too late

We stand upon the brink of the precipice

Poe:

We grow sick and dizzy

We go to shrink from danger but instead we approach it We are intoxicated by the mere idea

Of a fall from such a great height

This fall, this rushing annihilation

For the very reason

It contains the most loathsome and ghastly images

Of death and suffering

For this reason do we now most impetuously desire it There is no passion in nature

So demonic as the passion of him who

Shuddering upon the edge, meditates a plunge

We will these actions merely

Because we feel that we should not

Having realized this, I swoon

It is the spirit of the perverse

The idea of a poison candle struck my fancy

And I procured one for my victim

I will not vex you with impertinent details

But suffice it to say the verdict was

«Death by the visitation of God»

Rowena:

All went well for me Poe:

All went well for me Rowena:

His estate inherited

I reveled in absolute security

I would never be found out

I was safe

I was safe

If I did not prove fool enough to make open confession

Poe:

If I did not prove fool enough to make public confession

No sooner had I uttered those words

Than I felt an icy chill creep into my heart

I made a strong effort

To shake off this nightmare of the soul

I laughed

I whistled

I walked and then walked faster

I thought I saw a formless shape approaching me from behind

And then I ran

I pushed and shoved blindly

I thought I left a hand upon my throat

No mortal hand

I screamed

And then clearly, clearly

I enunciated pregnant sentences

That consigned me to the hangman and the hell

The fullest judicial conviction

Today I wear chains but tomorrow I shall be fetterless

But where?

Oh holy dream

Oh beam of light

I fall prostrate with excitement this holy night