Sapokanikan Lyrics - Divers - Joanna Newsom

The cause is Ozymandian 

The map of Sapokanikan 

Is sanded and bevelled 

The land lorn 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 

Sang 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 disguise 

What the scholars surmise was a mother and kid 

Interred with other daughters 

In dirt in other potters' 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 causes 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 ol' Florry Walker 

And 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 preceeded 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 work might count 

O mercy! O God! 

Go out, await the hunter to decipher the stone 

And what lies under the city is gone 

Look and despair 

Look and despair