Cellar Door

Time's lonely door opens to another door
These halls play light across in perfect reflection
Like the mirrors of Versailles, scrubbed and polished
Once upon the mantlepiece I seen a vase of real flowers
I tried to smell them but I had a cold that week
She took me into her office of tans and yellows
Important books lined every inch of space, but their
Spines was all pristine, and her mouth was open
I think she was waiting for me to say somethin'
I said I seen a jay fly through the hall that morning
Navigate each door, must've come from the garden
And was there some garden on the other end, ma'am?
Where it may have gone? I thought that was a good one,
To just slip in there like that, of course there was no jay
But she only sat like a stone block with her glasses
And asked me if silence was still what I craved the most
On some days, I said, though again I was lying
For I wanted conversation and life and color and music
And still I couldn't change what I had heard,
When I heard it I didn't want to hear no other words
From that person, I don't know her name or her face
I don't know his distance, his solidness, or his age
I don't pretend to understand their meaning
But these walls they've been polished to a sheen
And under arcs of sodium I saw the night nurse preening
She evidently had a date when the morning came
I wonder how people can wander from place to place
Yawning, I thought of my days of ancient grace, when
I was alone and fawning over girls and poets, we were
Made of gold in that lifetime, a long time ago.
Here is the bottom of the drain where all the dross goes.
I'm afraid because every creature on earth dies alone.
And where do their minds drift off to? Where do they
Find their mothers and fathers waiting for them at home?
Where are the lost days of learning, and the promise that
Some day you'll be an astronaut, or an archaeologist
If you keep on studyin'? She took notes with her pen,
It was red markings in black boxes on white paper
What a coincidence in my freewheeling mind:
How are we supposed to reach toward the light, ma'am
If the silence and the darkness leave us deaf and blind?
How am I supposed to go on dying for years? For all my life?
It was as cold as a rectory that day, all the mops were out
They were scrubbing and polishing, and my books were stolen
The week before, so I was in my finest t-shirt and open-
Flapped shorts, with low cut socks for traction on the floor
And it was cold, even though they could have asked the Sun in
But I think that old Sun may have had the sense to refuse
An' I think the Son may just have had the good sense to refuse
Cos we were stored in there, swept into those rooms like refuse
Or kept pickled in jars, or mashed up like meat and reused
And so I cried for once not out of sadness, for that was long
Gone. I cried when I saw that jay, and he made his break for
The garden; I laughed and wiped my tears away when
He flew for day, and I could hear his freedom song a-startin'.