But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
Bob Dylan, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"
Bob Dylan wrote "A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall" in 1963. That is Dylan, pictured above, during the year he wrote the song. Click the link and I think you should be able to hear him sing it.
"A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall" is, without doubt, one of Dylan's greatest songs. That was the song that Patti Smith sang at the Nobel Prize Ceremony in which Dylan was honored (and she was so nervous that she had to stop, once, and start over). You can click that link to hear Patti Smith sing!
Click this link, right here, for the lyrics, online, though I have also reprinted them below, so that's a click that's not strictly necessary.
Dylan's descriptive catalogue of the horrors we find in the world around us remains accurate, sixty years later. It is not the listing of these challenges we face in the world, however, that makes Dylan's song so powerful for me. I have been moved, from the time I first heard the song, and I am still moved, by those two, concluding lines. I am repeating them, from above, for emphasis:
I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
Our faith that we can "stand on the ocean" - at least until we start sinking - is what allows any of us to act, to speak out, to do something never thought about or contemplated before, to take the kind of action that Hannah Arendt said was the way that we can (and do) change the world.
In 1963, I was two years through college. Some who read this blog posting were probably born after that.
However long it's been, though, I have come to the conclusion that I well know the words to the song I need to sing. I'm going to keep singing it till the end, too. I am not planning to quit, and Bob Dylan provides quite a good model for that. He has never stopped singing, and he knows his song well.
Standing on the ocean. Singing the truth.
Don't we all? Or, at least, can't we all!
oooOOOooo
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall
Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall
And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall
Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall
Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall
Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991 by Special Rider Music
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| The Nobel Prize Audience Applauding Patti Smith |
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