words and music by dar williams



The blue it speaks so full

It's like the beauty one can barely stand

Or too much things dropped in your hand

And there's a green like the peace

In your heart sometimes

Printed underneath the sheets of ashy snow

And there's a blue like where the urban angels go, very bright

Now the calder mobile tips a biomorphic sphere

Then it swings its dangling pieces

Round to other paintings here



Your behavior is so male

It's like you can't explain yourself to me

I think i'll ask renoir to tea

For his flowers are as real as they are all the time

And the sunlight sets the furniture aglow

It's a pleasant time as far as people go, how far do they go?

Well his roses are perfect and his words have no wings

I know what he can give me and i like to know these things



I met her at the funeral

She said i don't know what he meant to me

I just know he affected me

An effect not unlike his art,

I believe



The service starts and we are in the know

He had so much to say but more to show, and ain't that true of life?

So we weep for a person who lived at great cost

Yet we barely knew his powers till we sensed that we had lost



A friend and i in a museum room

She says, "look at mark rothko's side

Did you know about his suicide?

Some folks were born with a foot in the grave, but not me, of course"

And she smiles as if to say we're in the know

Then she names a coffee place where we can go, uptown

Now the painting is desperate, but the crowds wash away

In a crowd of kind pedestrians who've seen enough today