#341 / The Moon Gives Light And It Shines By Night

  

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"... I scarcely feel the glow..." 

That first line in this posting, just above, is how Bob Dylan continues the lyric that I have made into the title to what I am writing about today. The words I am quoting are coming from Bob Dylan's song, "When The Deal Goes Down." If you click the link just provided, you should be able to hear Dylan sing that song. I have provided the complete lyrics at the bottom.

Lots of Dylan's songs are appropriate for a Sunday review and comment. Dylan's "religious" sentiments, rather than his "political statements," are what draw me to his music most forcefully. In the song featured here, the always equivocal nature of our human existence is what comes across most clearly to me. Dylan says, for instance, that "tomorrow keeps turning around" (so true!). And he sings that "we live and we die [but] we know not why." This, too, is true, or so I think. I think Dylan's statement, here, is better than all those too boastful statements often made (in churches) on Sundays. If we think we really know "why," we had better reevaluate!

If we are lucky, and if we "keep on the sunny side," perhaps - to quote another wonderful song - we will, in the end (and hopefully before then), find some way to "forgive" all those who need forgiveness. This may include God, depending on how we feel about things, but it absolutely and certainly must include ourselves, and our parents, and our friends, and virtually everyone we have come in contact with in this equivocal life - a life that can be counted on to bring disappointments and disasters to us all. 

"When The Deal Goes Down" is just another Bob Dylan "statement of faith," or so it seems to me, which means that I think that Dylan is singing it out  to that "First Mover," and "Creator" - that person whom we will be meeting up with (Ojalá) "When The Deal Goes Down," for us.

oooOOOooo

When The Deal Goes Down

In the still of the night, in the world's ancient light
Where wisdom grows up in strife
My bewildering brain, toils in vain
Through the darkness on the pathways of life
Each invisible prayer is like a cloud in the air
Tomorrow keeps turning around
We live and we die, we know not why
But I'll be with you when the deal goes down

We eat and we drink, we feel and we think
Far down the street we stray
I laugh and I cry and I'm haunted by
Things I never meant nor wished to say
The midnight rain follows the train
We all wear the same thorny crown
Soul to soul, our shadows roll
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down

The moon gives light and shines by night
I scarcely feel the glow
We learn to live and then we forgive
O'er the road we're bound to go
More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours
That keep us so tightly bound
You come to my eyes like a vision from the skies
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down

I picked up a rose and it poked through my clothes
I followed the winding stream
I heard a deafening noise, I felt transient joys
I know they're not what they seem
In this earthly domain, full of disappointment and pain
You'll never see me frown
I owe my heart to you, and that's sayin' it true
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down

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