Their spectral bodies clinging to the shrouds

[sovay]

Occasionally the inability to sleep yields a pleasant surprise: I discovered Robyn Hitchcock's "The Ghost Ship" (Balloon Man, 1988) tonight. My first thought was that I loved it. My second was that if I hadn't known who wrote the song, I could easily have mistaken it for something by the Decemberists—the off-kilter rhyming couplets, the vague anachronism, the specific and slightly surreal details. It was therefore extremely gratifying to read this interview. I imagine someday there will be a very lovely cover.

The ghost ship haunts the sea
She'll come back and marry me
The rust is where her heart should be tonight
Her face is where her fingers were tonight

A glassy-checkered engine room
The speechless silence of the tomb
The manuscripts inside the womb unfurl
A girl translucent as a jellyfish
That palpitates upon a dish
She stings you with her gently falling curl
And sinking in the waters green tonight
I wonder where my lover's been tonight

The ghost ship changes course
And on the deck there stands a horse
Who's munching on sardines and gorse and hay
The captain trawls a net across the bay

The bubbles rising from the deep
Where dead men sing themselves to sleep
From oak and coral, they do seep to say
Okay, you read my future like a chart
See through my skin into my heart
That flutters in my ribcage like a bird
And the ghost ship sails on into someone's life

The air from bottles forms into
The skeletons of all the crew
In white, they dance against the blue and wail
Their curling bodies flail around the sail

The figurehead before the mast
Stares back into the golden past
Across the wrinkled sea so vast, forlorn
She mourns, she flutters round me like a moth
That beats against mosquito cloth
And tries to eat her way into my dreams
And sinking in the waters green tonight
I wonder where my love has been tonight

The melons on the riverbank
Are bulging through decaying planks
The beauty is so warm and dank and light
The captain wears a headless grin tonight

And silhouetted on the blue
The cook, the mate, the bosun too
They know not why or what they do at all
They fall like masonry in the abyss
That opens every time we kiss
I hear their laughter echo round the bay
And the ghost ship sails on into someone's life

And maybe with this for a dream, I can sleep.

Comments

[ex-blue-verv849.livejournal.com]

I hope you were able to; in summer, my sleep goes away.

Hey, I have a question about Readercon. If one were to only be able to afford (through the vagaries of phones and tires, primarily, and it's placement adjacent to rent being due) one day, Saturday would be the day to go, yes?

[sovay]

If one were to only be able to afford (through the vagaries of phones and tires, primarily, and it's placement adjacent to rent being due) one day, Saturday would be the day to go, yes?

I would think so. I don't know the precise schedule yet, but several of the traditional Readercon events—the Guests of Honor, the Rhysling Award Poetry Slan, the Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose Competition—are on Saturday. See you there?

[ex-blue-verv849.livejournal.com]

Yep. Will be there.

[sleepycyan.livejournal.com]

That's one of my favorite Hitchcock songs. :)

It's interesting to know that Meloy is into it as well. I can't tell you how many times I've listened to both artists in the same sitting. They just go together so very well.

[sovay]

That's one of my favorite Hitchcock songs.

I was only familiar with a handful of his songs ("Uncorrected Personality Traits," "Madonna of the Wasps," "Judas Sings (Jesus & Me)," "Sometimes A Blonde") before last night. I am now actively searching out more.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Fascinating lyrics. I'll listen to the song when next I manage to get broadband.

I hope you've slept better since.
(Been having a lot of insomnia lately, myself. Maybe it's something in the air?)