Hejira

I’m travelling in some vehicle
I’m sitting in some café
A defector from these petty wars
That shell shock love away
There’s comfort in melancholy
When there’s no need to explain
It’s just as natural as the weather
In this moody sky today
In our possessive coupling
So much could not be expressed
So now I am returning to myself
These things that you and I suppressed
I see something of myself in everyone
Right at this moment of the world
As snow gathers like bolts of lace
Waltzing on a bridal girl

You know it never has been easy
Whether you do or you do not resign
Whether you travel the breadth of extremities
Or you stick to some straighter line
Look here’s a man and a woman sitting on a rock
They’re either going to thaw out or freeze
Listen...
Sounds like Benny Goodman
Floating through the snowy trees
I’m porous with travel fever
But I’m so glad to be on my own
Still the slightest touch of a stranger
Sets up a trembling in my bones
I know — no one’s going to show me everything
We come and go unknown
Each so deep and so superficial
Between the forceps and the stone

Well I looked at the granite markers
Those tributes to finality — to eternity
And then I looked at myself here
Chicken scratching for a piece of immortality
In the church they light the candles
And the wax rolls down like tears
There is the hope and the hopelessness
I’ve witnessed all these years
We’re only particles of change I know
We’re just orbiting around the sun
But how can I have that point of view
When I’m bound and tied to someone
White flags of winter chimneys
Waving — truce against the moon
In the mirrors of a modern bank
From the window of my hotel room

I’m travelling in some vehicle
I’m sitting in some café
A defector from the petty wars
Until love sucks me back that way

~ Joni Mitchell