En Gallop! [Walnut Whales]

Joanna Newsom

This place is damp and ghostly
I'm already gone
And the halls were lined
With the disembodied and the dustly wings
Which fell from flesh gasplessly

And I go where the trees are
And I walk from a higher education
(For now, and for hire)

It beats me, but I do not know
It beats me, but I do not know
It beats me, but I do not know
I do not know

Palaces and storm-clouds
The rough, straggly sage, and the smoke
And the way it will all come together
(In quietness, in time)

Bitch, you laws of property
Bitch, you free economy
Bitch, you unending afterthoughts
You could've told me before —

Never get so attached to a poem
You forget truth that lacks lyricism;
Never draw so close to the heat
That you forget that you must eat
Oh whoa

In order to make the music
Seems I must break so many things
Turn over like bracken and sea-shrapnel
Grazed by the tongue of a beetle-green sea

Let each note be
A full-bodied song:
Enough fingers
Enough toes
Skin to cover the rich, bloody beat
Enough belly
Enough feet