Joanna Newsom Follow

Sawdust And Diamonds

From the top of the flight

Of the wide, white stairs

Through the rest of my life

Do you wait for me there?

There's a bell in my ears

There's a wide white roar

Drop a bell down the stairs

Hear it fall forevermore

Drop a bell off of the dock

Blot it out in the sea

Drowning mute as a rock;

Sounding mutiny

There's a light in the wings

Hits this system of strings

From the side while they swing;

See the wires, the wires, the wires

And the articulation

In our elbows and knees

Makes us buckle as we couple in endless increase

As the audience admires

And the little white dove

Made with love, made with love:

Made with glue, and a glove, and some pliers

Swings a low sickle arc

From its perch in the dark

Settle down

Settle down my desire

And the moment I slept I was swept up in a terrible tremor

Though no longer bereft, how I shook and I couldn't remember

Then the furthermost shake drove a murthering stake in

And cleft me right down through my center

And I shouldn't say so, but I know that it was then, or never

Push me back into a tree

Bind my buttons with salt

Fill my long ears with bees

Praying: please, please, please,

Love, you ought not!

No you ought not!

Then the system of strings tugs on the tip of my wings

(cut from cardboard and old magazines)

Makes me warble and rise like a sparrow

And in the place where I stood, there is a circle of wood

A cord or two, which you chop and you stack in your barrow

It is terribly good to carry water and chop wood

Streaked with soot, heavy booted and wild-eyed;

As I crash through the rafters

And the ropes and pulleys trail after

And the holiest belfry burns sky-high

Then the slow lip of fire moves across the prairie with precision

While, somewhere, with your pliers and glue you make your first incision

And in a moment of almost-unbearable vision

Doubled over with the hunger of lions

'Hold me close', cooed the dove

Who was stuffed, now, with sawdust and diamonds

I wanted to say: why the long face?

Sparrow, perch and play songs of long face

Burro, buck and bray songs of long face!

Sing: I will swallow your sadness and eat your cold clay

Just to lift your long face

And though it may be madness, I will take to the grave

Your precious longface

And though our bones they may break, and our souls separate

- why the long face?

And though our bodies recoil from the grip of the soil

- why the long face?

In the trough of the waves

Which are pawing like dogs

Pitch we, pale-faced and grave,

As I write in my log

Then I hear a noise from the hull

Seven days out to sea

And it is the damnable bell!

And it tolls - well, I believe, that it tolls - for me!

It tolls for me!

Though my wrists and my waist seemed so easy to break

Still, my dear, I would have walked you to the very edge of the water

And they will recognise all the lines of your face

In the face of the daughter of the daughter of my daughter

Darling, we will be fine, but what was yours and mine

Appears to be a sandcastle that the gibbering wave takes

But if it's all just the same, then will you say my name:

Say my name in the morning, so I know when the wave breaks?

I wasn't born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilight

No, I was all horns and thorns, sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright

So: enough of this terror

We deserve to know light

And grow evermore lighter and lighter

You would have seen me through

But I could not undo that desire

Oh-oh, oh-oh-oh desire

Oh-oh, oh-oh-oh desire

Oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh desire

From the top of the flight

Of the wide, white stairs

Through the rest of my life

Do you wait for me there