Inflammatory Writ Lyrics - Milk-eyed Mender - Joanna Newsom

Oh, where is your inflammatory writ 

Your text that would inside a light be lit 

Our music deserving devotion unswerving 

Cry "Do I deserve her?" with unflagging fervor 

Well, no we do not if we cannot get over it 

But what's it mean when suddenly we're spent, tell me true 

Ambition came and reared its head and went far from you 

Even mollusks have weddings, though solemn and leaden 

But you dirge for the dead and take no jam on your bread 

Just a supper of salt and a waltz through your empty bed 

And all at once it came to me 

And I wrote in hunch 'til four-thirty 

But that vestal light 

It burns out with the night 

In spite of all the time that we spend on it 

On one bedraggled ghost of a sonnet 

While outside the wild boars root 

Without bending a bough underfoot 

Oh it breaks my heart 

I don't know how they do it 

So don't ask me 

And as for my inflammatory writ 

Well, I wrote it and I was not inflamed one bit 

Advice from the master derailed that disaster 

He said "Hand that pen over to me, poetaster!" 

While across the great plains keening lovely and awful 

Ululate the lost Great American Novels 

An unlawful lot left to stutter and freeze, floodlit 

But at least they didn't run, to their undying credit