Joanna Newsom

I found a little plot of land in the Garden of Eden, it was dirt, and dirt is all the same. I tilled it with my two hands and I called it my very own, there was no one to dispute my claim. Well, you'd be shocked at the state of things, the whole place...

My life comes and goes My life comes and goes Short flight, free rows I lie down and doze My life came and went My life came and went Short flight, free descent Poor flight attendant But the sky, over the ocean! And the ocean, skirting the city! And the city...

Sending the first scouts over, back from the place beyond the dawn: Horse, bear your broken soldier, eyes frozen wide at what went on. And Time, in our camp, is moving as you’d anticipate it to. But what is this sample proving? Anecdotes cannot say wh...

Angel came down from heaven yesterday, Stayed with me just long enough to rescue me And she told me a story yesterday About the love between the moon and the deep blue sea Then she spread her wings high over me, Said she'll come back to see me tomorrow...

Driven through by her own sword Summer died last night, alone Even the ghosts huddled up for warmth Autumn has come to my hometown Friendly voices, dead and gone, Singing, Star of the country down Even the ghosts help raise the barn Here, now, in my ho...

This is the song for Baby Birch. I will never know you. And at the back of what we've done, there is the knowledge of you. I wish we could take every path. I could spend a hundred years adoring you. Yes, I wish we could take every path, because I hate...

when i saw the blossoms broke after the rain limp and sodden, when you wrote me again made me think of spiders i washed down the drain spiders' ghosts, thrown up and back again blessing all the birds that died so i could live be a woman, be a woman bles...

We sailed away on a winter's day With fate as malleable as clay But ships are fallible, i say And the nautical, like all things, fades And i can recall our caravel A little wicker beetle-shell With four fine masts and lateen sails Its bearings on cair paravel...

Ca' the yowes to the knowes Call them where the heather grows Call them where the burnie rowes My bonnie dearie When I went down the water-side To see the fishes sweetly plaid Beneath the hazel spreading wide And the moon that shines so clearly When...

Feel the mattress tense beneath me Like the muscle of non-sleepy Feathers flexing will defeat me And it vexes me complet-e-ly And the hexes heat covertly Like a slow low-flying turkey Like a texan drying jerky But his meaty mitts can't hurt me With my steely...

That means no Where i come from I am cold, out waiting for the day to come I chew my lips And i scratch my nose Feels so good to be a rose Oh don't Don't you lift me up Like i'm that shy no-no-no-no-no, just give it up See, there are bats all dissolving in...

I'll tell it as I best know how And that's the way it was told to me I must have been a thief or a whore Then surely was thrown overboard, Where, they say I came this way from the deep blue sea It picked me up and tossed me round I lost my shoes and to...

when you ate I saw your eyelashes saw them shake like wind on rushes in the corn field when she called me moths surround me - thought they'd drown me and I miss your precious heart dried rose petal, redbrown circles framed your eyes and stained your kn...

A diver is my love (and I am his, if I am not deceived), who takes one breath above, for every hour below the sea; who gave to me a jewel worth twice this woman's life (but would cost her less than laying at low tide, to see her true love phosphoresce)....

I will pack up my pretty dresses. I will box up my high-heeled shoes. A sparkling ring, for every finger, I'll put away, and hide from view. Coats of boucle, jacquard and cashmere; cartouche and tweed, all silver shot-- and everything that could remind...

Easy, easy, my man and me; we could rest and remain here, easily. We are tested and pained by what's beyond our bed; we are blessed and sustained by what is not said. No one knows what is coming, or who will harvest what we have sown, or how I've be...

The meadowlark and the chim-choo-ree and the sparrow Set to the sky in a flying spree, for the sport of the pharaoh A little while later the Pharisees dragged comb through the meadow Do you remember what they called up to you and me, in our window? There...

This place is damp and ghostly, I am already gone And the halls were lined with the disembodied And dustly wings which fell from flesh Gasplessly And I go where the trees go And I walk from a higher education For now, and for hire It beats me but I do not kn...

Erin, Erin, Erin! Erin across America do now cheer me on can't you hear the song for you? quick, now - caramel dip give it up to the runaway ship hail, now - hail to the bitch the hairy literary with the nervous, nervous twitch shy, your light pops...

I can feel a difference. Today, a difference: all of us, in our tents, fearing god like a mistress. We lay on the rocks, in the sun, watching you and your mama row in, I sat up and blinked, when you appeared, so pale you were nearly clear! Later, I...

Dear charming kite, Do litely bite The foggy fields, the lowing lanes The rickety roads and the kneeling plains Oh lazy light With massive might You dare my dream of snowy cloth Felt snapping white as albatross Is bitten by the wind and rocks Is hush...

Last night, again, you were in my dreams. Several expendable limbs were at stake. You were a prince, spinning rims, all sentiments indian-given and half-baked. I was brought in on a palanquin made of the many bodies of beautiful women. Brought to thi...

Twenty miles left to the show Hello, my old country, hello Stars are just beginning to appear And I have never in my life before been here And it's my heart, not me, who cannot drive At which conclusion you arrived Watching me sit here bolt upright and...

What we built, at the kiln that won't be stilled Did not set well The old veil of desire Like the vessels that we fired Fell thin as eggshells And every season, somebody burns Downtown, taking turns Taking a bus, to take a train and just plain vamoose Now th...

From the courtyard, I floated in and I watched it go down. Heard the cup drop, thought, "Well, that's why they keep them around." The blackguard sat hard, down, with no head on him now; and I felt so bad, ‘cause I didn't know how to feel bad enough to...

My heart became a drunken runt on the day I sunk in this shunt, to tap me clean of all the wonder and the sorrow I have seen, since I left my home: My home, on the old Milk Lake, where the darkness does fall so fast, it feels like some kind of mistake...

Oh, where is your inflammatory writ? Your text that would incite a light; 'be lit' Our music deserving Devotion unswerving Cried; 'do I deserve her?' With unflagging fervor Well, no we do not, if we cannot get over it But what's it mean when suddenly we're s...

I was tired of being drunk. My face cracked like a joke. So I swung through here like a brace of jackrabbits, with their necks all broke. I stumbled at the door with my boot, and I knocked against the jamb. and I scrabbled at your chest, like a mute,...

Whose is the hand that I will hold? Whose is the face I will see? Whose is the name that I will call When I am called to meet thee? In this life who did you love Beneath the drifting ashes? Beneath the sheeting banks of air That barrenly bore our ratio...

Hay and a clean stall And ivy on a garden wall And a sign saying sold And an old coat for the bad cold I believe in you Do you believe in me? What do you want to do? Are we leaving the city? On the black road Through the gold fields While the fiends are plow...

Down in the green hay Where monkey and bear usually lay They woke from a stable-boy's cry He said; someone come quick! The horses got loose, got grass-sick! They'll founder! Fain, they'll die What is now known by the sorrel and the roan? By the chestnut, and...

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. Not informed of the natural law, squatting, lordly, on a stool, in a stall, we spun gold c...

Mercy me, the night is long. Take my pen, to write you this song. Lord: is it harder to carry on, or to know when you are done? All my life, I've felt as though I'm inside a beautiful memory, replaying with the sound turned down low. Long-life, show...

Hey hey hey, the end is near! On a good day, you can see the end from here. But I won't turn back, now, though the way is clear; I will stay for the remainder. I saw a life, and I called it mine. I saw it, drawn so sweet and fine, and I had begun to f...

And there was a booming above you That night black airplanes flew over the sea And they were lowin' and shiftin' like Beached whales, Shelled snails As you strained and you squinted to see The retreat of their hairless and blind cavalry You froze in yo...

We speak in the store I'm a sensitive bore And you're markedly more And I'm oozing suprise But it's late in the day And you're well on your way What was golden went gray And I'm suddenly shy And the gathering floozies Afford to be choosy And all snee...

There is a spring, not far from here The water runs both sweet and clear Both sweet and clear, and cold Could crack your bones with veins of gold I stood, a-wagging, at the tap Just a-waiting on the lagging, rising sap I held the cold tin ladle to my li...

I've been celebrating way too long And I've been drinking, I'm ashamed to say Still feel thirsty and, God I wanna drink the water from the well Still feel thirsty, and God I wanna drink and ring the living bell Ring the bell Ring the living bell Still...

Sadie, white coat You carry me home And bury this bone And take this pine cone Bury this bone To gnaw on it later, gnawing on the telephone And 'til then we pray and suspend The notion that these lives do never end And all day long we talk about merc...

It's the same old lady putting out the wash Standing in the rain in her mackintosh Same old lady standing in the rain The thought of New York was going insane Hey little leaf lying on the ground Now you're turning slightly brown Why don't you come back on the...

The cause is Ozymandian. The map of Sapokanikan is sanded and bevelled, the land lone and leveled 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 A...

From the top of the flight Of the wide, white stairs Through the rest of my life Do you wait for me there? There's a bell in my ears There's a wide white roar Drop a bell down the stairs Hear it fall forevermore Hear it fall forevermore Drop a bell off of t...

So, so long ago, and so far away, when Time was just a line that you fed me, when you wanted to stay, we'd talk as soft as chalk, till morning came, as pale as a pearl: No time! No, no time! Now, I have got all the time in the world. Say, honey,...

I slept all day awoke with distaste and I railed, and I raved That the difference between the sprout and the bean is a golden ring, it is a twisted string. And you can ask the counsellor; you can ask the king; and they'll say the same thing; and it...

If you wanna come on down Down with your bones so white And watch the freight trains pound Into the wild wild night How I would love to gnaw Gnaw on your bones so white And watch as the freight trains paw Paw at the wild wild night All these ghost towns Wrea...

We should shine a light on A light on And the book of right-on's right on It was right on I killed my dinner with karate Kick 'em in the face, taste the body Shallow work is the work that I do Do you want to sit at my table? My fighting fame is fabled And fo...

The diver is my own love (and I am his, if I am to be deceived) who takes one breath above for every hour below the sea, Who gave to me a jewel worth twice this woman's life, though it cost her less than laying at low tide to see her true love phosp...

bottom of the ninth inning at which I stray through the crowd first it was what I call quiet then it was biblically loud you should have seen how they tumbled you should have seen how they danced you should have seen them all luscious and lean as they...

If I have the space of half a day I'm ashamed of half the things I say I'm ashamed to have turned out this way And I desire to make amends But it don't make no difference, now And no one's listening, anyhow And lists of sins and solemn vows Don't make you any...

Svetlana sucks lemons across from me And I am progressing abominably And I do not know my own way to the sea But the saltiest sea knows its own way to me And the city that turns, turns protracted and slow And I find myself toeing the embarcadero And I find my...

There was a knight and a lady bright And three little babes had she She sent them away to a far country To learn their grammary They hadn't been gone but a very short time About three months and a day When the lark spread over this whole wide world And taken...

Time passed hard And the task was the hardest thing she'd ever do But she forgot The moment she saw you So it would seem to be true: When cruel birth debases, we forget When cruel death debases We believe it erases all the rest That precedes But stand brave,...

I was tired of being down. My face cracked like a joke. But I swung through like a brace of dead rabbits with their necks all broke. I scuffle on your doorway, I struggle with the jamb, and I scrabble up like a mute with my fists of ham. Tryin’ to...

I believed they had got what they came for I believed our peril was done On the eve of the last of the Great Wars After three we had narrowly won But the fourth It was carelessly done I saw his ship in its whistling ascension As they launched from the Capitol...

the tadpole buoyant as basalt the seashorse horsing in assault the owlet in his greenery the narwhal in his cup of sea they all believe they all believe but collusion bleeds through back allies from parapets that end on feet when one is weak they disc...

do you know what this is son? this is the panopticon and all around us blink the brash and shifty eyes of common cash so do we die or do we travel? down the path by which one dabbles in the arts of antediluvian crafts with yarn and glue so gather twi...

We picked our way down to the beach, watching the waves dragging out of our reach: tangling tails, like a sodden sheet; dangling entrails from the gut of the sea. Hoarding our meals (alfalfa and rolls); trying not to catch the cold eyes of the gulls-- I hope...

And what do you remember most? The line of the sea, seceding the coast? Fine capillaries, glowing with cars? The comfort you drew from the light of the stars? And how long did you climb that night With the ice in your lungs, on the rungs of the light? Beyond...