Lyrics In California - Joanna Newsom

In California

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
(just like they told you it would;
Just like the Tulgeywood)
When I came into my land
I did not understand:
Neither dry rot, nor the burn pile
Nor the bark-beetle, nor the dry well
Nor the black bear
But there is another
Who is a little older
When I broke my bone
He carried me up from the riverside
To spend my life
In spitting-distance
Of the love that I have known
I must stay here, in an endless eventide
And if you come and see me
You will upset the order
You cannot come and see me
For I set myself apart
But when you come and see me
In California
You cross the border of my heart
Well, I have sown untidy furrows
Across my soul
But I am still a coward
Content to see my garden grow
So sweet & full
Of someone else’s flowers
But sometimes
I can almost feel the power
Sometimes I am so in love with you
(Like a little clock
That trembles on the edge of the hour
Only ever calling out «Cuckoo, cuckoo»)
When I called you
You, little one
In a bad way
Did you love me?
Do you spite me?
Time will tell if I can be well
And rise to meet you rightly
While, moving across my land
Brandishing themselves
Like a burning branch
Advance the tallow-colored
Walleyed deer
Quiet as gondoliers
While I wait all night, for you
In California
Watching the fox pick off my goldfish
From their sorry, golden state--
And I am no longer
Afraid of anything, save
The life that, here, awaits
I don’t belong to anyone
My heart is heavy as an oil drum
And I don’t want to be alone
My heart is yellow as an ear of corn
And I have torn my soul apart, from
Pulling artlessly with fool commands
Some nights
I just never go to sleep at all
And I stand
Shaking in my doorway like a sentinel
All alone
Bracing like the bow upon a ship
And fully abandoning
Any thought of anywhere
But home
My home
Sometimes I can almost feel the power
And I do love you
Is it only timing
That has made it such a dark hour
Only ever chiming out
«Cuckoo, cuckoo»?
My heart, I wear you down, I know
Gotta think straight
Keep a clean plate;
Keep from wearing down
If I lose my head
Just where am I going to lay it?
(For it has half-ruined me
To be hanging around
Here, among the daphne
Blooming out of the big brown;
I am native to it, but I’m overgrown
I have choked my roots
On the earth, as rich as roe
Here
Down in California.)