Song Meaning
The lyrics paint a vivid, almost primal picture of a consciousness caught between states of being, oscillating between dream and waking, innocence and knowledge. The opening lines establish a liminal space, "Deeper than sleep but not so deep as death," where memory is fluid, a cycle of "Remembered and forgot." This state seems to be one of nascent awareness, where fundamental concepts like love and evil are grasped intuitively, if fleetingly, before the harsh reality of the waking world intrudes with a "burning song and the tree burning blind."
The core tension emerges from the narrator's experience of a profound, almost cosmic awakening tied to the act of feeding and being fed. The "calm milk-giver" represents a source of sustenance and knowledge, connected to natural cycles of "growth, the sex of fire and grass, Renewal of all waters and the time of the stars." This primal wisdom contrasts sharply with the narrator's own internal struggle, marked by "green pain" and "wizards in the earth." The act of feeding becomes a complex exchange, where the narrator "gave to feed and fed on feeding," suggesting a reciprocal, perhaps even parasitic, relationship with this deeper knowledge.
The imagery of the "black snake with gold bones" and the contrasting "Black sleeps, gold burns" is particularly striking. This duality seems to represent the fundamental forces at play: the darkness of the unconscious or primal state versus the illumination of knowledge or experience. As the narrator fully wakes, this duality is internalized, with "Shadows grew in my veins, my bright belief" and "Voices of all black animals crying to drink." The experience is one of being overwhelmed by primal instincts and the "Cries of all birth," a raw, unfiltered connection to the natural world that is both terrifying and fundamental.
Ultimately, these lyrics capture a profound, almost overwhelming sense of interconnectedness with the cycles of life, death, and rebirth, experienced through a disorienting blend of dream and waking. The effectiveness lies in its visceral, non-linear portrayal of consciousness grappling with immense, elemental forces. The narrator's journey, if it can be called that, is less about linear progression and more about immersion in a cyclical, deeply felt experience of existence, leaving the reader with a sense of awe and perhaps a touch of existential dread at the raw power of the natural world and the self.
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