Joni Mitchell - The Sire of Sorrow LYRICS

Let me speak, let me spit out my bitterness--

Born of grief and nights without sleep and festering flesh

Do you have eyes?

Can you see like mankind sees?

Why have you soured and curdled me?

Oh you tireless watcher! what have I done to you?

That you make everything I dread and everything I fear come true?



Once I was blessed; I was awaited like the rain

Like eyes for the blind, like feet for the lame

Kings heard my words, and they sought out my company

But now the janitors of shadowland flick their brooms at me

Oh you tireless watcher! what have I done to you?

That you make everything I dread and everything I fear come true?



(antagonists: man is the sire of sorrow)

Ive lost all taste for life

Im all complaints

Tell me why do you starve the faithful?

Why do you crucify the saints?

And you let the wicked prosper

You let their children frisk like deer

And my loves are dead or dying, or they dont come near

(antagonists: we dont despise your chastening

God is correcting you)



Oh and look who comes to counsel my deep distress

Oh, these pompous physicians

What carelessness!

(antagonists: oh all this ranting all this wind

Filling our ears with trash)

Breathtaking ignorance adding insult to injury!

They come blaming and shaming

(antagonists: evil doer)

And shattering me

(antagonists: this vain man wishes to seem wise

A man born of asses)

Oh you tireless watcher! what have I done to you?

That you make everything I dread and everything I fear come true?



(antagonists: we dont despise your chastening)

Already on a bed of sighs and screams,

And still you torture me with visions

You give me terrifying dreams!

Better I was carried from the womb straight to the grave.

I see the diggers waiting, theyre leaning on their spades.



(antagonists: man is the sire of sorrow

Sure as the sparks ascend)

Where is hope while youre wondering what went wrong?

Why give me light and then this dark without a dawn?

(antagonists: evil is sweet in your mouth

Hiding under your tongue)

Show your face!

(antagonists: what a long fall from grace)

Help me understand!

What is the reason for your heavy hand?

(antagonists: youre stumbling in shadows

You have no name now)

Was it the sins of my youth?

What have I done to you?

That you make everything I dread and everything I fear come true?

(antagonists: oh your guilt must weigh so greatly)

Everything I dread and everything I fear come true

(antagonists: man is the sire of sorrow)

Oh you make everything I dread and everything I fear come true