"I Want You" By Bob Dylan
The guilty undertaker sighs
The lonesome organ grinder cries
The silver saxophones say I should refuse you
The cracked bells and washed-out horns
Blow into my face with scorn
But it's not that way
I wasn't born to lose you
I want you, I want you
I want you so bad
Honey, I want you.
The drunken politician leaps
Upon the street where mothers weep
And the saviors who are fast asleep
They wait for you
And I wait for them to interrupt
Me drinkin' from my broken cup
And ask for me
Open up the gate for you
I want you, I want you
Yes, I want you so bad
Honey, I want you.
Now all my fathers they've gone down
True love they've been without it
But all their daughters put me down
'Cause I don't think about it.
Well, I return to the Queen of Spades
And talk with my chambermaid
She knows that I'm not afraid
To look at her
She is good to me
And there's nothing she doesn't see
She knows where I'd like to be
But it doesn't matter
I want you, I want you
Yes, I want you so bad
Honey, I want you.
Now your dancing child with his Chinese suit
He spoke to me, I took his flute
No, I wasn't very cute to him - Was I ?
But I did though because he lied
Because he took you for a ride
And because time was on his side
And because I ..
I want you, I want you
Yes, I want you so bad
Honey, I want you.
Theodore Roethke and Bob Dylan are similar in the sense that they both speak from a deeper place within themselves. When you read some of Roethke’s Poetry you sometimes are left with a “wow, that is deep” feeling. Dylan’s musical lyrics often leave you with that same feeling. These two artists have a way of expressing their emotions by searching the soul for truth. They have both had to experience a lot of pain to understand their emotions. Theodore’s poem “In A Dark Time” gives the reader a look into how he feels about his soul and his faith in a higher being with lines such as, “I meet my shadow in the deepening shade” and “Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire” we can understand that he struggles with his own impurities. Roethke says he, “lives between the heron and the wren, beasts of the hill and serpents of the den”, he is hiding from his faith. Dylan’s song “I Want You” is about his deep longing for this woman whom he never gets to have. Dylan relates his love to the personification of death through lyrics like, “The guilty undertaker sighs” and “I wasn’t born to loose you”, he is able to stress the urgency of his love. Dylan expresses his true desperate feelings toward the woman he desires by comparing love and death with lines, “The lonesome organ grinder cries” and “saviors who are fast asleep, they wait for you”. While Dylan’s song is about love and death and Roethke’s poem is about faith and desire these two artists come together in the depth of their emotions and ability to release these thoughts through song and poetry.
In A Dark Time By Theodore Roethke
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or a winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in a broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.