Joanna Newsom - Sapokanikan lyrics

rate me

The cause is Ozymandian

The map of Sapokanikan

Is sanded and bevelled

The land lorn and levelled

By some unrecorded and powerful hand

Which plays along the monument

And drums upon a plastic bag

The "brave men and women so dear to God"

"And famous to all of the ages" rag

Sang do u luv me?

Will u remember?

The snow falls above me

The renderer renders

The event is in the hand of God

Beneath a patch of grass, her

Bones the old Dutch master hid

While elsewhere Tobias

And the angel disguise

What the scholars surmise was a mother & kid

Interred with otha daughters

In dirt in otha potters' fields

Above them, parades

Mark the passin' of days

Through parks where pale colonnades arch in marble & steel

Where all of the 20.000 attendin' ur footfall

And the causes they died for are lost in the idlin' bird calls

And the records they left are cryptic at best

Lost in obsolescence

The text will not yield, nor x-ray reveal

With any fluorescence

Where the hand of the master begins & ends

I fell, I tried to do well but I won't be

Will u tell the one that I luv to remember & hold me

I call & call for the doctor

But the snow swallows me whole with ol' Florry Walker

And the event lives only in print

He said:

'It's alright & it's all ova now'

And boarded the plane

His belt unfastened

The boy was known to show unusual darin'

And, called a 'boy'

This alderman, confoundin' Tammany Hall

In whose employ King Tamanend himself preceeded John’s fall

So we all raise a standard

To which the wise & honest soul may repair

To which a hunter

A hundred years from now, may look & despair & see with wonder

The tributes we have left to rust in the parks

Swearin' that our hair stood on end

To see John Purroy Mitchel depart

For the Western front where work might count

O mercy! O God!

Go out, await the hunter to decipher the stone

And what lies under the city is gone

Look & despair! (x2)