Sapokanikan
Joanna Newsom Lyrics


The cause is Ozymandian
The map of Sapokanikan
Is sanded and beveled
The land lone 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"

Sing, do you love me?
Will you 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 disguised
What the scholars surmise was a mother and kid

Interred with other daughters
In dirt in other potter's fields
Above them, parades
Mark the passing of days
Through parks where pale colonnades arch in marble and steel

Where all of the twenty-thousand attending your footfall
And the cause they died for are lost in the idling 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 and ends

I fell, I tried to do well but I won't be
Will you tell the one that I love to remember and hold me?
I call and call for the doctor
But the snow swallows me whole with old Florry Walker
The event lives only in print

He said "it's alright"
And "it's all over now" and boarded the plane
His belt unfastened
The boy was known to show unusual daring
And called a "boy"
This alderman, confounding Tammany Hall
In whose employ King Tamanend himself preceded John's fall

So we all raise a standard
To which the wise and honest soul may repair
To which a hunter
A hundred years from now, may look and despair
And see with wonder
The tributes we have left to rust in the parks
Swearing that our hair stood on end
To see John Purroy Mitchel depart
For the Western front where our work might count

All exeunt, all go out
Await the hunter to decipher the stone
And what lies under now the city is gone

Look, and despair
Look, and despair


Lyrics © ROUGH TRADE PUBLISHING



Written by: Joanna Newsom

Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
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Most interesting comments from YouTube:

Viki

The song is based on the poem "Ozymandias" writ here:
"I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."



Did

+Cosmos That's true, but this is only Shelly's version.

Smith's version:
In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.


So "look and despair" from the song is from Shelly, while "unrecorded and powerful hand", "the city is gone", the hunter deciphering the stone, and "see with wonder" are from Smith.



AkyvashaAuhm

<3 The parts were she sings...
"So we all raise a standard
to which the wise and honest soul may repair;
to which a hunter,
a hundred years from now,
may look, and despair, and see with wonder
the tributes we have left to rust in the park:
swearing that our hair stood on end,
to see John Purroy Mitchel depart for the Western Front,
where work might count.
All exeunt! All go out!
Await the hunter, to decipher the stone
(and what lies under, now).
The city is gone.
Look, and despair.
Look, and despair.",
Is amazing.... the seemingly manic unraveling harmonies of this piece are nutty and beautiful..... the flowery flute and recorder just do me in.



All comments from YouTube:

Rohit Koshy

Joanna Newsom is the reason why I close Spotify and open YouTube once in a while

Devyn Kumar

Youtube cancer you won't need Spotify...

Billy Messenger

She's on deezer! Literally got rid of spotify and got this app for her music haha

Modern Moonlight

Mood

albertnic

Apple Music. She's on there, plus you'll be vicariously paying her, as well as your other favourite artists, more money :)

Emily Weber

yeah same

22 More Replies...

Simonlover17

I can't believe Joanna Newsom inspired Percy Bysshe Shelley's famous poem Ozymandias. What a legend <3

NM

She's a legend, she's an icon, and she IS the moment.

strangenessandcharms

I guess time is a symptom here lol

Shlarry

ROFL Jackass, love it!

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