Lyrics Of My Youth: Sound, Followed

In the night, I have followed
A Sound, I have followed
Away, I have followed it long

In the dark, I have wandered
Seeking what I once heard
Away, I have sought it so long

Gentle rhythm that carries me
Rhythm won't set me free
I have been captive so long, so long

Rhythm keeps tempting me
To touch that sound I cannot see
I have been groping so long, so long
I have been groping so long

Now I'm doomed to follow
All my days, doomed to follow
A restless song bourne on the wind

In the night, I have followed
A Sound, I have followed
The sweetest sound that I've ever heard

~~~~~
From 1974 (Maybe)

Lyrics Of My Youth

Somewhere back in the early 1970s, I fancied myself a songwriter and folksinger. I recently unearthed some lyrics and music sheets from those times, and I wondered: Where did that strange young woman go with her poems and her dreams? What would I think of her if I met her now?

In James Joyce's Ulysses, the character Stephan Dedalus ponders: "My childhood bends beside me. Too far for me to lay a hand there once or lightly. Mine is far and his secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tryants willing to be dethroned."

And so I am posting some of my old lyrics here, bringing them forth from their weary and dark and secret palace, into the light of this new millennium. And I am finding in those old lyrics a few moments of charm and beauty and magic still.

I share them here with an older, and wearier world. Perhaps that strange young woman who journeyed so far in her dreams would smile.

Lyrics Of My Youth

Sound, Followed

Lyrics Of My Youth

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