Anecdotes Lyrics - Divers - Joanna Newsom

Sending the first scouts over 

Back from the place beyond the dawn: 

Horse, bear your broken soldier 

Eyes frozen wide at what went on 

And Time, in our camp, is moving 

As you'd anticipate it to 

But what is this sample proving? 

Anecdotes cannot say what Time may do 

I kid with Rufous Nightjar 

When our men are all asleep: 

"It ain't about how rare you are 

But how hard you are to see 

Take, you and me-" 

"When are you from?" said he 

In our blind of winter leaves 

As we sighted out their fliers 

In the grayscale of the night 

And fumbled on the bare ground 

To bury round landmines 

While the dew lay down and dried 

We signal Private Poorwill, when morning starts to loom: 

"Pull up from your dive!" 

Till we hear the telltale Boom 

Too soon- 

Hotdogging loon, caught there 

Like a shard of mirror in the moon! 

Now they've stopped giving orders 

But i follow anyway 

Laying in our state of torpor 

Waiting out the day 

While the dew burns away 

Rushing, tearing, speeding home: 

Bound to a wheel that is not my own 

Where round every bend i long to see 

Temporal infidelity 

All along the road, the lights stream by 

I want to go where the dew won't dry 

I want to go where the light won't bend- 

Far as the eye may reach-nor end 

But inasmuch as that light is loaned 

And, insofar as we've borrowed bones 

Must every debt now be repaid 

In star-spotted, sickle-winged night raids 

While we sing to the garden, and we sing to the stars 

And we sing in the meantime 

Wherever you are? 

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 

-and daughter, when you are able 

Come down and join! The kettle's on 

And your family's round the table 

Will you come down, before the sun is gone?