Carthage - Amelie Andrezel
I have been thinking about writing this song for a while now and I was too tired today to do anything else. It’s inspired by a lot of things—including the sack of Alexandria and the burning of the Great Library—but also three T. S. Eliot poems: The Waste Land, The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, and Ash Wednesday.
The following lines are from The Waste Land:
To Carthage then I came
Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest
burning.
This is in reference to an excerpt from St. Augustine’s Confessions:
To Carthage then I came, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears.
Anyway, do enjoy.
Carthage
Music and Lyrics by Amelie Andrezel
I went to the librarian
He called me down to the sea
We watched the warships fan the fire
They thought would set them free
I don’t remember it as holy
I don’t remember it as bright
I think he said, “It’s only thunder”
I remember praying he was right…
Burning
Oh lord thou pluckest me out
Burning
I woke up on the hardwood
Got to sleep at 5 am
Dragged my body to the river
Just to dredge it up again
I swam upstream against the pilgrims
Shoulder to shoulder wading by
But blessed are angels, traveling salesmen
All creatures of the dark, sacred night
Burning
Oh lord thou pluckest me out
Burning
Princes and sailors
Mathematicians and knaves
A little blood spilled on the pages
Alleluia! We are saved
Burning
Oh lord thou pluckest me out
Burning
Oh my lady of the desert
If he sits beneath your tree
Spread your ashes across his forehead
Leave us singing, each to each…
Burning
Oh lord thou pluckest me out
Burning
II
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been
contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfullness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying
Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.
Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.
-T. S. Eliot
