De Profundis Songtext
von Frederic Rzewski
De Profundis Songtext
People point to Reading Gaol and say
That is where the artistic life leads a man
Well, it might lead to worse places
Mechanical people to whom life is a shrewd speculation
Depending on calculation
Always know where they are going
And go there
They start with the ideal desire of being the parish beadle
And they succeed in being the parish beadle
And no more
A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself
Succeeds in being what he wants to be
That is his punishment
Those who want a mask have to wear it
But with the dynamic forces of life it is different
People who desire self-realization
Never know where they are going
They can′t know
To recognize that the soul of a man is unknowable
Is the ultimate achievement of wisdom
The final mystery is oneself
When one has weighed the sun in the balance
And measured the steps of the moon
And mapped out the seven heavens
There still remains oneself
Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?
We are the zanies of sorrow
We are clowns whose hearts are broken
We are specially designed to appeal
To the sense of humor
On November 13th, 1895
I was brought down here from London
From two o'clock till half past two on that day
I had to stand on the center platform
Of Clapham Junction in convict dress
And handcuffedFor the world to look at
When people saw me they laughed
Each train swelled the audience
Nothing could exceed their amusement
That was before they knew who I was
As soon as they had been informed
They laughed still more
For half an hour I stood there
In the grey November rain
Surrounded by a jeering mob
For a year I wept every day
At the same hour and for the same space of time
In prison tears are a part of every day′s experience
A day in prison on which one does not weep
Is a day on which one's heart is hard
Not a day on which one's heart is happy
Morality does not help me
I am a born antinomian
I am one of those who are made for exceptions
Not for laws
Religion does not help me
The faith that others give to what is unseen
I give to what one can touch and look at
Reason does not help me
It tells me that the laws under which I am convicted
And the system under which I have suffered
Are wrong and unjust
But somehow I have got to make both of these things
Just and right to me
I have got to make everything that has happened to me
Good for me
The plank bed, the loathsome food
The hard ropes, the harsh orders
The dreadful dress that makes sorrow
Grotesque to look at
The silence, the solitude, the shame
Each and all of these things
I had to transform into a spiritual experience
There is not a single degradation of the body
Which I must not try and make into
A spiritualizing of the soulI have no desire to complain. One of the
Many lessons that one learns in prison is that things are what they
Are and will be what they will be. Suffering is one very long moment
We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods and
Chronicle their return. With us, time itself does not progress. It
Revolves. It seems to circle round one center of pain. For us there
Is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and moon seem
Taken from us. Outside the day may be blue and gold, but the light
That creeps down through the thick glass of the small iron-barred
Window is gray. It is always twilight in one′s cell, as it is always
Twilight in one′s heart. And in the sphere of thought no less than in
The sphere of time, motion is no moreWe who live in prison and in
Whose lives there is no event but sorrow have to measure time by
Throbs of pain and the record of bitter moments. We have nothing
Else to think of. Suffering is the means by which we exist because
It is the only means by which we become conscious of existing
And the remembrance of suffering in the past is necessary to us
As the evidence of our continued identity. Between myself and
The memory of joy lies a gulf no less deep than that between
Myself and joy in its actuality. So much in this place do men live
By pain that my friendship with you, in the way in which I am
Forced to remember it, appears to me always as a prelude consonant
With those varying modes of anguish which each day I have to realize
As though my life had been a symphony of sorrow passing through
Its rhythmically linked movements to its certain resolution
The memory of our friendship is the shadow that walks with me
That seems never to leave me, that wakes me up at night to tell
The same story over and over. At dawn it begins again. It follows
Me into the prison yard and makes me talk to myself as I tramp round
Each detail that accompanied each dreadful moment I am forced to
Recall. There is nothing that happened in those ill-starred years
That I cannot recreate in that chamber of the brain which is set
Apart for grief or for despair. Every strained note of your voice
Every twitch and gesture of your nervous hands, every bitter word
Every poisonous phrase comes back to me. I remember the street or
River down which we passed, the wall or woodland that surrounded
Us, at what figure on the dial stood the hands of the clock, which
Way went the wings of the wind, the shape and color of the moon
Booka mooka kaka
Luka mooka booka
Tuka kapi pika kaka
Stuka pooka polka
Koka klopla roo
There is such a thing as leaving mankind alone
There is no such thing as governing mankind
All forms of government are failures
The gods are strange
It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us
They bring us to ruin through what in us is good
Gentle, humane, loving
Love of some kind is the only possible explanation
Of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world
If the world has been built of sorrow
It has been built by the hands of love
Because in no other way could the soul of man reach perfection
Far off, like a perfect pearl
One can see the city of God
It is so wonderful that it seems as if
A child could reach it in a summer's day
And so a child could
But with me and such as me it is different
One can realize a thing in a single moment
But one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet
We think in eternity but we move slowly through time
And how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison
I need not tell again
I hope to live long enough
And to produce work of such character
That I shall be able at the end of my days to say
"Yes, this is just where the artistic life leads
A man
For the last seven or eight months
In spite of a succession of great troubles
Reaching me from the outside world
Almost without intermission
I have been placed in direct contact with a new spirit
Working in this prison through man and things
That has helped me beyond words
So that while for the first year of my imprisonment
I did nothing else and can remember doing nothing else
But wring my hands in despair
And say
"What an ending
What an appalling ending"
Now I try to say to myself
And sometimes
When I am not torturing myself
Do really say
"What a beginning
What a wonderful beginning"
That is where the artistic life leads a man
Well, it might lead to worse places
Mechanical people to whom life is a shrewd speculation
Depending on calculation
Always know where they are going
And go there
They start with the ideal desire of being the parish beadle
And they succeed in being the parish beadle
And no more
A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself
Succeeds in being what he wants to be
That is his punishment
Those who want a mask have to wear it
But with the dynamic forces of life it is different
People who desire self-realization
Never know where they are going
They can′t know
To recognize that the soul of a man is unknowable
Is the ultimate achievement of wisdom
The final mystery is oneself
When one has weighed the sun in the balance
And measured the steps of the moon
And mapped out the seven heavens
There still remains oneself
Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?
We are the zanies of sorrow
We are clowns whose hearts are broken
We are specially designed to appeal
To the sense of humor
On November 13th, 1895
I was brought down here from London
From two o'clock till half past two on that day
I had to stand on the center platform
Of Clapham Junction in convict dress
And handcuffedFor the world to look at
When people saw me they laughed
Each train swelled the audience
Nothing could exceed their amusement
That was before they knew who I was
As soon as they had been informed
They laughed still more
For half an hour I stood there
In the grey November rain
Surrounded by a jeering mob
For a year I wept every day
At the same hour and for the same space of time
In prison tears are a part of every day′s experience
A day in prison on which one does not weep
Is a day on which one's heart is hard
Not a day on which one's heart is happy
Morality does not help me
I am a born antinomian
I am one of those who are made for exceptions
Not for laws
Religion does not help me
The faith that others give to what is unseen
I give to what one can touch and look at
Reason does not help me
It tells me that the laws under which I am convicted
And the system under which I have suffered
Are wrong and unjust
But somehow I have got to make both of these things
Just and right to me
I have got to make everything that has happened to me
Good for me
The plank bed, the loathsome food
The hard ropes, the harsh orders
The dreadful dress that makes sorrow
Grotesque to look at
The silence, the solitude, the shame
Each and all of these things
I had to transform into a spiritual experience
There is not a single degradation of the body
Which I must not try and make into
A spiritualizing of the soulI have no desire to complain. One of the
Many lessons that one learns in prison is that things are what they
Are and will be what they will be. Suffering is one very long moment
We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods and
Chronicle their return. With us, time itself does not progress. It
Revolves. It seems to circle round one center of pain. For us there
Is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and moon seem
Taken from us. Outside the day may be blue and gold, but the light
That creeps down through the thick glass of the small iron-barred
Window is gray. It is always twilight in one′s cell, as it is always
Twilight in one′s heart. And in the sphere of thought no less than in
The sphere of time, motion is no moreWe who live in prison and in
Whose lives there is no event but sorrow have to measure time by
Throbs of pain and the record of bitter moments. We have nothing
Else to think of. Suffering is the means by which we exist because
It is the only means by which we become conscious of existing
And the remembrance of suffering in the past is necessary to us
As the evidence of our continued identity. Between myself and
The memory of joy lies a gulf no less deep than that between
Myself and joy in its actuality. So much in this place do men live
By pain that my friendship with you, in the way in which I am
Forced to remember it, appears to me always as a prelude consonant
With those varying modes of anguish which each day I have to realize
As though my life had been a symphony of sorrow passing through
Its rhythmically linked movements to its certain resolution
The memory of our friendship is the shadow that walks with me
That seems never to leave me, that wakes me up at night to tell
The same story over and over. At dawn it begins again. It follows
Me into the prison yard and makes me talk to myself as I tramp round
Each detail that accompanied each dreadful moment I am forced to
Recall. There is nothing that happened in those ill-starred years
That I cannot recreate in that chamber of the brain which is set
Apart for grief or for despair. Every strained note of your voice
Every twitch and gesture of your nervous hands, every bitter word
Every poisonous phrase comes back to me. I remember the street or
River down which we passed, the wall or woodland that surrounded
Us, at what figure on the dial stood the hands of the clock, which
Way went the wings of the wind, the shape and color of the moon
Booka mooka kaka
Luka mooka booka
Tuka kapi pika kaka
Stuka pooka polka
Koka klopla roo
There is such a thing as leaving mankind alone
There is no such thing as governing mankind
All forms of government are failures
The gods are strange
It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us
They bring us to ruin through what in us is good
Gentle, humane, loving
Love of some kind is the only possible explanation
Of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world
If the world has been built of sorrow
It has been built by the hands of love
Because in no other way could the soul of man reach perfection
Far off, like a perfect pearl
One can see the city of God
It is so wonderful that it seems as if
A child could reach it in a summer's day
And so a child could
But with me and such as me it is different
One can realize a thing in a single moment
But one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet
We think in eternity but we move slowly through time
And how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison
I need not tell again
I hope to live long enough
And to produce work of such character
That I shall be able at the end of my days to say
"Yes, this is just where the artistic life leads
A man
For the last seven or eight months
In spite of a succession of great troubles
Reaching me from the outside world
Almost without intermission
I have been placed in direct contact with a new spirit
Working in this prison through man and things
That has helped me beyond words
So that while for the first year of my imprisonment
I did nothing else and can remember doing nothing else
But wring my hands in despair
And say
"What an ending
What an appalling ending"
Now I try to say to myself
And sometimes
When I am not torturing myself
Do really say
"What a beginning
What a wonderful beginning"
Writer(s): Luis Cortes Moreno, David De Las Heras Canas Lyrics powered by www.musixmatch.com
