I Like Songs With a Meaning
If I didn't share this before... Actually I've got no idea how I ended up finding this song. No, it wasn't a Google search for something else as a female friend helpfully suggested at the time. 😂
August 1999 - "It's about the passage of time and the inevitability of that, and about the need to seize the moment. All the images are about the transitory nature of things. In that part of the Sahara you really have the sense that when you pick up a handful of sand, that it really is the 'dust of fallen empires,' and of cultures that came and went. There were people living there when it was grassland. An ancient presence is there, and yet it can only be felt because there's no sign of it now, no living vestige of it, other than what's left of Timbuktu. Which relates to what our lives are all about. We're here, then we're gone. So if you're going to get anything out of me, get it now." -Bruce Cockburn, Breakfast in New Orleans, Dinner in Timbuktu
[youtube=https://youtu.be/4TD2ft4KPno]
There's a black and white crow
on the back of a two-toned sheep
in a field of broken yellow stalks
below looming cliffs.
High above the plains
little grey houses blend
with giant jagged boulders
and pale weathered stumps.
Life in the ghost of the bush.
Wind whips the acacias and strange forked palms
That cluster around the water hole
Suddenly, out of the blowing sand
A milk-white camel appears.
Turbaned rider, blue robe billowing,
bounces with the shambling trot;
wears a sword and a rifle on his back,
and hanging from his neck, a transistor radio...
You blink and like ghosts, they're gone
Under the wan disc of sand-masked sun
A woman grins - spits expertly
Into the path of a struggling black beetle
Six feet away
Hoists her water bucket onto her head
And strides off up the trail...
Sun a steel ball glowing
Behind endless blowing sand
Sun a steel ball glowing
Dust of fallen empires slowly flowing through my hands
Use me while you can
Pearl held in black fingers
Is the moon behind dry trees
Pearl held in black fingers
Bird inside the rib cage is beating to be free
Use me while you can
I've had breakfast in New Orleans
Dinner in Timbuktu
I've lived as a stranger in my own house, too
Dark hand waves in lamplight
Cowrie shell patterns change
And nothing will be the same again
Bullet in a sandstorm
Looking for a place to land
Bullet in a sandstorm
Full heart beats an empty one
In the deck they dealt to man
Use me while you can
August 1999 - "It's about the passage of time and the inevitability of that, and about the need to seize the moment. All the images are about the transitory nature of things. In that part of the Sahara you really have the sense that when you pick up a handful of sand, that it really is the 'dust of fallen empires,' and of cultures that came and went. There were people living there when it was grassland. An ancient presence is there, and yet it can only be felt because there's no sign of it now, no living vestige of it, other than what's left of Timbuktu. Which relates to what our lives are all about. We're here, then we're gone. So if you're going to get anything out of me, get it now." -Bruce Cockburn, Breakfast in New Orleans, Dinner in Timbuktu
[youtube=https://youtu.be/4TD2ft4KPno]
There's a black and white crow
on the back of a two-toned sheep
in a field of broken yellow stalks
below looming cliffs.
High above the plains
little grey houses blend
with giant jagged boulders
and pale weathered stumps.
Life in the ghost of the bush.
Wind whips the acacias and strange forked palms
That cluster around the water hole
Suddenly, out of the blowing sand
A milk-white camel appears.
Turbaned rider, blue robe billowing,
bounces with the shambling trot;
wears a sword and a rifle on his back,
and hanging from his neck, a transistor radio...
You blink and like ghosts, they're gone
Under the wan disc of sand-masked sun
A woman grins - spits expertly
Into the path of a struggling black beetle
Six feet away
Hoists her water bucket onto her head
And strides off up the trail...
Sun a steel ball glowing
Behind endless blowing sand
Sun a steel ball glowing
Dust of fallen empires slowly flowing through my hands
Use me while you can
Pearl held in black fingers
Is the moon behind dry trees
Pearl held in black fingers
Bird inside the rib cage is beating to be free
Use me while you can
I've had breakfast in New Orleans
Dinner in Timbuktu
I've lived as a stranger in my own house, too
Dark hand waves in lamplight
Cowrie shell patterns change
And nothing will be the same again
Bullet in a sandstorm
Looking for a place to land
Bullet in a sandstorm
Full heart beats an empty one
In the deck they dealt to man
Use me while you can
