The Cultivation of Christmas Trees

by T.S. Eliot

There are several attitudes towards Christmas,
Some of which we may disregard:
The social, the torpid, the patently commercial,
The rowdy (the pubs being open till midnight),
And the childish — which is not that of the child
For whom the candle is a star, and the gilded angel
Spreading its wings at the summit of the tree
Is not only a decoration, but an angel.

The child wonders at the Christmas Tree:
Let him continue in the spirit of wonder
At the Feast as an event not accepted as a pretext;
So that the glittering rapture, the amazement
Of the first-remembered Christmas Tree,
So that the surprises delight in new possessions
(Each one with its peculiar and exciting smell),
The expectation of the goose or turkey
And the expected awe on its appearance,

So that the reverence and the gaiety
May not be forgotten in later experience,
In the bored habituation, the fatigue, the tedium,
The awareness of death, the consciousness of failure,
Or in the piety of the convert
Which may be tainted with a self-conceit
Displeasing to God and disrespectful to children
(And here I remember also with gratitude
St. Lucy, her carol, and her crown of fire):

So that before the end, the eightieth Christmas
(By 'eightieth' meaning whichever is last)
The accumulated memories of annual emotion
May be concentrated into a great joy
Which shall be also a great fear, as on the occasion
When fear came upon every soul:
Because the beginning shall remind us of the end
And the first coming of the second coming.

Pretzel Logic

by Donald Fagen

I would love to tour the Southland
In a travelling minstrel show
Yes, I'd love to tour the Southland
In a traveling minstrel show

Yes, I'm dying to be a star and make them laugh
Sound just like a record on the phonograph
Those days are gone forever
Over a long time ago

I have never met Napoleon
But I plan to find the time
I have never met Napoleon
But I plan to find the time

'Cause he looks so fine upon that hill
They tell me he was lonely, he's lonely still
Those days are gone forever
Over a long time ago

I stepped up on the platform
The man gave me the news
He said, 'You must be joking, son
'Where did you get those shoes?'

Well, I've seen them on the TV, the movie show
They say the times are changing, but I just don't know
These things are gone forever
Over a long time ago

Dreams & Songs

by Warren Haynes

My whole life's been filled with song and dreams
When I was a child I had a time machine
Little did I know it would go to fast
Little did I know I could see the future
But not the past

Leave it all behind, come what may
Always thought I'd be coming home some day
Little did I know that life is hard
Here I am now, staring out a window
To my old back yard

Is there any comfort to be derived
In knowing that most of our lives
Could never be the same, could never go back home
And those that can, are lucky, I guess
To somehow escape from this mess
Me, I can only do it, in dreams and songs

Trying to feel the hope of running a race
Leaves an even bigger empty space
A moving target is harder to kill
Never was one for taking it easy
Or standing still

Nowadays I find myself again
Throwing stones and caution to the wind
Nothing's really changed but the scenery
Staring into my child's eyes, I realize
What it all means to me

Remember Surrender

by Sara Groves

Remember, surrender
Remember the rest
Remember that weight lifting off of your chest
And realizing that it's not up to you
And it never was

Remember, surrender
Remember relief
Remember how tears rolled down both of your cheeks
As the warmth of a heavenly father
Came closing in

I want to do that again
Why can't I live there
And make my home
In sweet surrender
I want to do so much more than remember

Remember, surrender
Remember the peace
Remember how soundly you fell fast asleep
In the face of your troubles
Your future still shone like the morning sun

Remember, surrender
Remember that sound
Of all of those voices inside dying down
But one who speaks clearly
Of helping and healing you deep within

Donal Óg

by Aoife O'Donovan

Black as night is this heart within me
Black as coal is this grief that drives me
Black as bootprints on polished hallways
And it's you who have blackened it forever and always

For you've taken what's before and behind me
East and west when you would not mind me
Sun, moon, and stars from the sky you've taken
And God, as well, if I'm not mistaken

Oh, Donal Óg, you'll not find me lazy
Not like some high-born expensive lady
I'll do your milking, and I'll nurse your baby
And if you were set upon, I'll defend you bravely

When all beside a vigil keep
The West's asleep, the West's asleep
Alas! and well may Erin weep
When Connaught lies in slumber deep
There lake and plain smile fair and free
'Mid rocks their guardian chivalry

Less Like Scars

by Sara Groves

It's been a hard year
But I'm climbing out of the rubble
These lessons are hard
Healing changes are subtle

But every day it's
Less like tearing, more like building
Less like captive, more like willing
Less like breakdown, more like surrender
Less like haunting, more like remember

And I feel you here
And you're picking up the pieces
Forever faithful
It seemed out of my hands, a bad situation
But you are able
And in your hands the pain and hurt
Look less like scars and more like character

Less like a prison, more like my room
It's less like a casket, more like a womb
Less like dying, more like transcending
Less like fear, less like an ending

Just a little while ago
I couldn't feel the power or the hope
I couldn't cope, I couldn't feel a thing
Just a little while back
I was desperate, broken, laid out
Hoping you would come

And I need you
And I want you here
And I feel you

And I know you're here
And you're picking up the pieces
Forever faithful
It seemed out of my hands, a bad situation
But you are able
And in your hands the pain and hurt
Look less like scars
And more like character

Spots of Time

by Warren Haynes

Spots of time flash before my eyes
Like ribbons of light
Helplessly I try to touch them
Before they disappear into the night

Running fearlessly as in a dream
Headlong into the wind
Cool night air, blowing through our hair
Moonlight dancing on your skin

Do you remember
How young we were, or is it just me?
Imagining like I always do
When we were once wild and free

Young man yearning for days gone by
Innocence once removed
Familiar feeling of a front porch swing
And a song: always soothes

Spots of time like windows appear
You can look out or in
But you can't get to the future I regret
Without going through the past, my friend

A mother's tears, a sparrow's wing
A lover's eyes softly glistening
Memories that to me are everything
But to someone else maybe only ashes and dust

Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

by Sandy Denny

Across the evening sky
All the birds are leaving
But how can they know
It's time for them to go?
Before the winter fire
I will still be dreaming
I have no thought of time

For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

Sad, deserted shore
Your fickle friends are leaving
Ah, but then you know
It's time for them to go
But I will still be here
I have no thought of leaving
I do not count the time

For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

And I am not alone
While my love is near me
I know it will be so
Until it's time to go
So come the storms of winter
And then the birds in spring again
I have no fear of time

For who knows how my love grows?
And who knows where the time goes?

Thrasher

by Neil Young

They were hiding behind hay bales
They were planting in the full moon
They had given all they had for something new
But the light of day was on them
They could see the thrashers coming
And the water shone like diamonds in the dew

And I was just getting up
Hit the road before it's light
Trying to catch an hour on the sun
When I saw those thrashers rolling by
Looking more than two lanes wide
I was feeling like my day had just begun

Where the eagle glides descending
There's an ancient river bending
Through the timeless gorge of changes
Where sleeplessness awaits
I searched out my companions
Who were lost in crystal canyons
When the aimless blade of science
Slashed the pearly gates

It was then I knew I'd had enough
Burned my credit card for fuel
Headed out to where the pavement turns to sand
With a one-way ticket to the land of truth
And my suitcase in my hand
How I lost my friends I still don't understand

They had the best selection
They were poisoned with protection
There was nothing that they needed
Nothing left to find
They were lost in rock formations
Or became park bench mutations
On the sidewalks and in the stations
They were waiting, waiting

So I got bored and left them there
They were just deadweight to me
Better down the road without that load
Brings back the time when I was eight or nine
I was watching my mama's TV
It was that great Grand Canyon rescue episode

Where the vulture glides descending
On an asphalt highway bending
Through libraries and museums
Galaxies and stars
Down the windy halls of friendship
To the rose clipped by the bullwhip
The motel of lost companions
Waits with heated pool and bar

But me I'm not stopping there
Got my own row left to hoe
Just another line in the field of time
When the thrasher comes, I'll be stuck in the sun
Like the dinosaurs in shrines
But I'll know the time has come
To give what's mine

Tonight, Tonight

by Billy Corgan

Time is never time at all
You can never ever leave
Without leaving a piece of youth
And our lives are forever changed
We will never be the same
The more you change, the less you feel

Believe, believe in me
Believe that life can change
That you're not stuck in vain
We're not the same
We're different tonight

And you know you're never sure
But you're sure you could be right
If you held yourself up to the light
And the embers never fade
In your city by the lake
The place where you were born

Believe, believe in me
Believe in the resolute urgency of now
And if you believe
There's not a chance tonight

We'll crucify the insincere tonight
We'll make things right, we'll feel it all tonight
We'll find a way to offer up the night tonight
The indescribable moments of your life tonight
The impossible is possible tonight
Believe in me as I believe in you tonight

First Air of Autumn

by Mike Cooley

First air of autumn up your nose
Popcorn, heavy hairspray, nylon pantyhose
Please stand and bow your heads
And pray you don't get old

The nurture and the admonition of your kind
The rules of 'only strong survive'
Cross-shaped swimming pools down in the blood and lifted up
Forever seeking favor from the light

Schoolhouse hallway like a prairie highway sprawls
The drop-off spins away the sun
The getting-there just proves it's nothing but a ball
Pray the horizon never comes

The hearts of the daughters of the men
Won by the softness of the sons of women's hands
To leave it up to love
Would leave it left to chance

Memory only shows the promise beauty broke
Of beauty ageless in its time
Light attracts the same
You glance away and the glory fades
And being on your arm has lost its shine

School house hallway like a prairie highway sprawls
The drop-off spins away the sun
Like eyes that once could cut through candle power on autumn nights
First air of autumn leaves me numb

Stanley Road

by Paul Weller

A hazy mist hung down the street
The length of its mile
As far as my eye could see
The sky so wide, the houses tall
Or so they seemed to be
So they seemed to me so small

And it gleamed in the distance
And it shone like the sun
Like silver and gold
It went on and on

The summer nights that seemed so long
Always call me back to return
As I rewrite this song
The ghosts of night, the dreams of day
Make me swirl and fall
And hold me in their sway

And it's still in the distance
And it shines like the sun
Like silver and gold
It goes on and on

The rolling stock rocked me to sleep
Amber lights flashing 'cross the street
And on the corner a dream to meet
Going on and on

Holland 1945

by Jeff Mangum

The only girl I've ever loved
Was born with roses in her eyes
But then they buried her alive
One evening 1945
With just her sister at her side
And only weeks before the guns
All came and rained on everyone
Now she's a little boy in Spain
Playing pianos filled with flames
On empty rings around the sun
All sing to say my dream has come

But now we must pick up every piece
Of the life we used to love
Just to keep ourselves
At least enough to carry on

And now we ride the circus wheel
With your dark brother wrapped in white
Says it was good to be alive
But now he rides a comet's flame
And won't be coming back again
The Earth looks better from a star
That's right above from where you are
He didn't mean to make you cry
With sparks that ring and bullets fly
On empty rings around your heart
The world just screams and falls apart

But now we must pick up every piece
Of the life we used to love
Just to keep ourselves
At least enough to carry on

And here's where your mother sleeps
And here is the room where your brothers were born
Indentations in the sheets
Where their bodies once moved but don't move anymore
And it's so sad to see the world agree
That they'd rather see their faces fill with flies
All when I'd want to keep white roses in their eyes

Farther On

by Jackson Browne

In my early years I hid my tears
And passed my days alone
Adrift on an ocean of loneliness
My dreams like nets were thrown
To catch the love that I'd heard of
In books and films and songs
Now there's a world of illusion and fantasy
In the place where the real world belongs

Still I look for the beauty in songs
To fill my head and lead me on
Though my dreams have come up torn and empty
As many times as love has come and gone

To those gentle ones my memory runs
To the laughter we shared at the meals
I filled their kitchens and living rooms
With my schemes and my broken wheels
It was never clear how far or near
The gates to my citadel lay
They were cutting from stone some dreams of their own
But they listened to mine anyway

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say
It could be I've lost my way
Though I keep a watch over the distance
Heaven's no closer than it was yesterday
And the angels are older
They know not to wait up for the sun
They look over my shoulder
At the maps and the drawings of the journey I've begun

Now the distance leads me farther on
Though the reasons I once had are gone
I keep thinking I'll find what I'm looking for
In the sand beneath the dawn
But the angels are older
They can see that the sun's setting fast
They look over my shoulder
At the vision of paradise contained in the light of the past

And they lay down behind me
To sleep beside the road till the morning has come
Where they know they will find me
With my maps and my faith in the distance moving farther on

Purple Toupee

by John Linnell

I remember the year I went to camp
I heard about some lady named Selma and some blacks
Somebody put their fingers in the president's ears
And it wasn't too much later they came out with Johnson's wax

I remember the book depository
Where they crowned the king of Cuba
Now that's all I can think of, but I'm sure there's something else
Way down inside me, I can feel it coming back

Purple toupee will show the way
When summer brings you down
Purple toupee and gold lame
Will turn your brain around

Chinese people were fighting in the park
We tried to help them fight, no one appreciated that
Martin X was mad when they outlawed bell bottoms
Ten years later they were sharing the same cell

I shouted out, 'Free the Expo '67!'
'Til they stepped on my hair and then told me I was fat
Now I'm very big, I'm a big, important man
And the only thing that's different is underneath my hat

Purple toupee is here to stay
After the hair has gone away
The purple brigade
Is marching from the grave

We're on some kind of mission
We have an obligation
We have to wear toupees

Drowned

by Pete Townshend

There are men high up there fishing
Haven't seen quite enough of the world
I ain't seen a sign of my heroes
And I'm still diving down for pearls

Let me flow into the ocean
Let me get back to the sea
Let me be stormy, let me be calm
Let the tide in and set me free

I'm flowing under bridges
Then flying through the sky
I'm traveling down cold metal
Just a tear in baby's eye

I am not the actor
This can't be the scene
But I am in the water
As far as I can see

I'm remembering distant memories
Recalling other names
Rippling over canyons
And boiling in the train

Let me flow into the ocean
Let me get back to the sea
Let me be stormy and let me be calm
Let the tide in, rush over me

Little Gidding (Pt. III)

[Pt. II here]
by T.S. Eliot

There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between
                     them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lives—unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:
For liberation—not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a country
Begins as attachment to our own field of action
And comes to find that action of little importance
Though never indifferent. History may be servitude,
History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,
The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,
To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.

Sin is Behovely, but
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.
If I think, again, of this place,
And of people, not wholly commendable,
Of no immediate kin or kindness,
But of some peculiar genius,
All touched by a common genius,
United in the strife which divided them;
If I think of a king at nightfall,
Of three men, and more, on the scaffold
And a few who died forgotten
In other places, here and abroad,
And of one who died blind and quiet
Why should we celebrate
These dead men more than the dying?
It is not to ring the bell backward
Nor is it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose.
We cannot revive old factions
We cannot restore old policies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them
And those whom they opposed
Accept the constitution of silence
And are folded in a single party.
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.

[Pt. IV here]

Anthem for Doomed Youth

by Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
        —Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
        Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
        Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
        The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Reelin' in the Years

by Donald Fagen

Your everlasting summer, and you can see it fading fast
So you grab a piece of something that you think is going to last
You wouldn't know a diamond if you held it in your hand
The things you think are precious, I can't understand

Are you reelin' in the years?
Stowin' away the time?
Are you gatherin' up the tears?
Have you had enough of mine?

You've been telling me you're a genius since you were seventeen
In all the time I've known you I still don't know what you mean
The weekend at the college didn't turn out like you planned
The things that pass for knowledge, I can't understand

I've spent a lot of money, and I've spent a lot of time
The trip we made to Hollywood is etched upon my mind
After all the things we've done and seen, you find another man
The things you think are useless, I can't understand

After Blenheim

by Robert Southey

It was a summer evening,
  Old Kaspar's work was done,
And he before his cottage door
  Was sitting in the sun;
And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

She saw her brother Peterkin
  Roll something large and round,
Which he beside the rivulet
  In playing there had found:
He came to ask what he had found
That was so large and smooth and round.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy,
  Who stood expectant by;
And then the old man shook his head,
  And with a natural sigh—
''Tis some poor fellow's skull,' said he,
'Who fell in the great victory.

'I find them in the garden,
  For there's many here about;
And often when I go to plough
  The ploughshare turns them out.
For many thousand men,' said he,
'Were slain in that great victory.'

'Now tell us what 'twas all about,'
  Young Peterkin he cries;
And little Wilhelmine looks up
  With wonder-waiting eyes;
'Now tell us all about the war,
And what they fought each other for.'

'It was the English,' Kaspar cried,
  'Who put the French to rout;
But what they fought each other
  I could not well make out.
But everybody said,' quoth he,
'That 'twas a famous victory.

'My father lived at Blenheim then,
  Yon little stream hard by;
They burnt his dwelling to the ground,
  And he was forced to fly:
So with his wife and child he fled,
Nor had he where to rest his head.

'With fire and sword the country round
  Was wasted far and wide,
And many a childing mother then
  And newborn baby died:
But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.

'They say it was a shocking sight
  After the field was won,
For many thousand bodies here
  Lay rotting in the sun;
But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory.

'Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won,
  And our good Prince Eugene'—
'Why 'twas a very wicked thing!'
  Said little Welhelmine;
'Nay—nay, my little girl,' quoth he,
'It was a famous victory.

'And everybody praised the Duke
  Who this great fight did win'—
'But what good came of it at last?'
  Quoth little Peterkin.
'Why that I cannot tell,' said he,
'But 'twas a famous victory.'