Hejira

Album: Hejira (1976)
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  • I'm traveling in some vehicle
    I'm sitting in some cafe
    A defector from the petty wars
    That shell shocked love away

    There's comfort in melancholy
    When there's no need to explain
    It's just as natural as the weather
    In this moody sky today

    In our possessive coupling
    So much could not be expressed
    So now I am returning to myself
    These things that you and I suppressed

    I see something of myself in everyone
    Just at this moment of the world
    As snow gathers like bolts of lace
    Waltzing on a ballroom girl

    You know it never has been easy
    Whether you do or you do not resign
    Whether you travel the breadth of extremities
    Or stick to some straighter line

    Now here's a man and a woman sitting on a rock
    They're either going to thaw out or freeze
    Listen, strains of Benny Goodman
    Coming through' the snow and the pinewood trees

    I'm porous with travel fever
    But you know I'm so glad to be on my own
    Still somehow the slightest touch of a stranger
    Can set up trembling in my bones

    I know, no one's going to show me everything
    We all come and go unknown
    Each so deep and superficial
    Between the forceps and the stone

    Well, I looked at the granite markers
    Those tributes to finality, to eternity
    And then I looked at myself here
    Chicken scratching for my immortality

    In the church, they light the candles
    And the wax rolls down like tears
    There is the hope and the hopelessness
    I've witnessed thirty years

    We're only particles of change I know, I know
    Orbiting around the sun
    But how can I have that point of view
    When I'm always bound and tied to someone

    White flags of winter chimneys
    Wave truce against the moon
    In the mirrors of a modern bank
    From the window of a hotel room

    I'm traveling in some vehicle
    I'm sitting in some cafe
    A defector from the petty wars
    Until love sucks me back that way Writer/s: Joni Mitchell
    Publisher: Reservoir Media Management, Inc.
    Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

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