Joanna Newsom — No Provenance

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Allelu, allelu:
I have died happy
And lived to tell the tale to you
I have slept for forty years
And woke to find me gone
I woke safe and warm in your arms
In your arms, your arms
In your arms

Not informed of the natural law
Squatting, lordly, on a stool, in a stall
We spun gold clear out of straw
And, when our bales of bullion
Were stored
You burned me like a barn
I burned safe and warm in your arms
In your arms, your arms

I’m afraid of the Big Return
There’s a certain conversation lost
And that loss incurred
With nobody remaining
To register who had passed this way
In the night
In the middle of the night
(negating their grace and their sight)
Till only I remember, or mark
How we had our talk:

We took our ride
So that there was no-one home
And the lights of Rome
Flickered and died
And, what’s more
I believe that you knew it, too;
I think you saw their flares
And kept me safely unawares
In your arms
Your arms, in your arms

The grass was tall, and strung with burrs
I essayed that high sashay which
In my mind, was my way;
You hung behind, in yours
Anyhow, she did not neigh
I do not know
What drew our eyes to hers;
That little black mare did not stir
Till I lay down in your arms

Poor old dirty little dog-size horse! —
Swaying and wheezing
As a matter of course;
Swaying and wheezing
As a matter of pride
That poor old nag, not four palms wide
Had waited a long time
Coated in salt
Buckled like a ship run foul of the fence
And in the middle of the night
She’d sprung up
No provenance
Bearing the whites of her eyes

And you, with your
‘arrangement’ with Fate
Nodded sadly at her lame assault
On that steady old gate
Her faultlessly etiolated fishbelly-face;
The muzzle of a ghost

And, pretty Johnny Appleseed
Via satellite feed
Tell us, who was it
That you then loved the most?
Pretty Johnny Appleseed
Leave a trail that leads
Straight back down to the farm
Lay me down
Safe and warm in your arms
In your arms