Joanna Newsom In California lyrics

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,
Wall-eyed 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.
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 the 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"?

Cu-ckoo, cu-ckoo, koo, ha-a, ha-hour, ha-a, ha-a [x4]

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 the big brown;
I am native to it, but I'm overgrown.
I am choked my roots
on the earth, as rich as roe,
here,
down in California)