Archive of the Day

These are the lyrics to a song called "The Gulf of Araby" by the Irish singer Katell Keineg. She gets credit for writing it, and her rendition is beautiful, but I would more highly recommend Natalie Merchant's version, which appeared on a live album of hers. It's less spare than Keineg's version, but Merchant's voice is also less melodramatic on the choruses, which makes them even more powerful, in my opinion. When she sings, "two neighbors who are proud of their massacres," you figure this song would have moved people a thousand years ago, and sadly, will probably move them a thousand years from now, if we're still around:

If you could fill a veil with shells
from Klinney's shore
and sweet-talk in a tongue that is no more
If wishful thoughts could bridge
the gulf of Araby between
what is, what is, what is and what can never be

If you could hold the frozen flow
of New Hope Creek
and hide out from the world
they said you might meet
If you could unlearn all the words
that you never wanted heard
If you could stall the southern wind
that's whistling in your ears
you could take what is, what is, what is
to what can never be

One man of 70 whispers, "free at last"
Two neighbors who are proud of their massacres
Three tyrants torn away in a winter's month
Four prisoners framed by a dirty judge
Five burned with tires
Six men still inside
and seven more days
to shake at the great divide
the gulf of Araby

Well, we would plow and part the earth to bring you home
we would harvest every miracle ever known
And if they laid out all the things
that these ten years were to bring
we would gladly give them up
to bring you back to us

There is nothing we would not give
to kiss you and to believe we could take
what is, what is, what is to what can never be

One man of 70 whispers, "not free yet"
Two neighbors who make up knee deep in their dead
Three tyrants grab the reigns in the summer's heat
Four prisoners lost in the fallacy
Five on my life
Six I'm dead inside
and seven more days to shake at the great divide
the gulf of Araby