Deliver

Deliver is a song about wanting to change. There’s a bit of wordplay in the title. In the first stanza, deliver is a birth – as in a delivery – but in this instance, it is a failed one. The rest of the song is a cry for deliverance.

You’ll recall from Dante that the 9th and deepest circle of Hell is a frozen lake. The bodies of sinners are frozen there at various depths. Cross that image with the images of Hiroshima after the bomb fell. I’m trying to say that something like that is what i see sometimes when i survey my soul.

Deliver

Is this the day I was born for,
Loosed from the lips of a quivering womb
Snatched to the earth in a bleeding rage?
This is my hundredth awakening -
A flash of light swallowed up in gloom -
Now like a cradle, now like a cage.

Deliver me from the body that burdens my bones.
Deliver me from the grave I’ve called home.
In this valley gather my shattered limbs.³
Hallelujah! And almost amen.

Night is the eye turning inward;
Quiet, the heart of the loneliest place
Where memory lingers without a name.
If I could just speak to her one word
Jesus the tears on the harlot’s face
Stone the dust of her sobbing shame.⁴

Deliver me from the dreams that have haunted my bed.
Silence the blamers in my head.
Tell the dry bones within me to live again.
Hallelujah! And almost amen.

I dream of a darkened horizon,
A desolate wasteland in my mind,
And stand on the threshold of the soul.
Here all the wounds I have frozen
Ache in a present free from time.
Here I am longing to be whole.

Deliver me from the sorrow that clouds my eyes.
Deliver me from my fears and my lies.
Cry the valley and gather the bones of my men.
Hallelujah! And almost amen.

1. Hiroshima Picture, Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/05/asia_pac_hiroshima_then_and_now/img/2.jpg [↩]
2. Gustave Dore's Illustration of Dante's 9th Circle of Hell, Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Gustave_Dore_Inferno32.jpg [↩]
3. The allusions to bones in all the choruses are from the Valley of Dry Bones passage in Ezekiel 37. [↩]
4. I hadn’t wholly decided how to phrase this when I first wrote it, so in the recording I sing, “… speak to her one word – Jesus. The tears on the harlot’s face fall, stoning the dust …”

   I’ve sinced changed my mind. I mean it to be a series of predicates following “If i could just . . .” I’ll sing it this way when i re-record it:
   “If i could just speak to her one word /
   Jesus the tears on the harlot’s face /
   Stone the dust of her sobbing shame”

   Jesus the tears stirs my imagination more. And stone the dust is the violence i want. [↩]

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Apr 22nd, 2003 | By Justin Brock | Category: Songs