Song Meaning
These lyrics open with a deceptively simple, profound question: "What are days for?" The immediate answer grounds existence in the everyday, stating, "Days are where we live." This initial exchange sets a contemplative, almost meditative tone, focusing on the fundamental units of our lives.
The lyrics quickly establish the inescapable, repetitive nature of time. Days "come, they wake us / Time and time over," suggesting a relentless cycle. There's a prescriptive quality too, with the declaration "They are to be happy in:" — an instruction or perhaps a hopeful aspiration for how we should experience these recurring moments. The rhetorical question, "Where can we live but days?" reinforces this sense of inevitability, boxing us into the present.
The entire mood shifts dramatically with the second stanza. The narrator's "solving that question" about the purpose of days doesn't bring peace or clarity, but rather a sudden, almost alarming event. "Brings the priest and the doctor / In their long coats / Running over the fields." This unexpected image is potent and unsettling. These figures, traditionally associated with spiritual guidance and physical healing, appear in a state of urgency, their "long coats" adding to a sense of formality or gravitas amidst the frantic action.
This abrupt, surreal ending is what makes these lyrics so effective. The arrival of the priest and doctor, running across an open landscape, suggests that grappling with the core meaning of existence isn't a purely intellectual exercise. Instead, it seems to trigger a profound, perhaps even crisis-level, event that demands the intervention of those who deal with life's ultimate questions of spirit and body. The ambiguity of their purpose—are they coming to help, to warn, or to judge?—leaves a lasting, thought-provoking impression.
View Artist