This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
And no-one saw the carny go
The weeks flew by
Until they moved on the show
Leaving his caravan behind
It was parked out on the south east ridge
And as the company crossed the bridge
With the first rain filling the bone-dry river bed
It shone, just so, upon the edge
"Away, away, we're sad" they said
Dog-boy, Atlas, Mandrake, the geeks, the hired hands
There was not one among them that did not cast an eye behind
In the hope that the carny would return to his own kind
The Carny left behind a horse, all skin and bone
That he named "Sorrow"
And it was a shallow, unmarked grave
That that old nag was laid
In the then parched meadow
And it was the dwarves were given the task of digging the ditch
And laying the nag's carcass in the ground
While boss Bellini, waved his smoking pistol around
Saying "The nag was dead meat"
"We can't afford to carry dead weight"
While the whole company standing about
Not making a sound
And turning to the dwarves perched on the enclosure gate
The boss says "Bury this lump of crow bait"
And the rain came hammering down
Everybody running for their wagons
Tying all the canvas flaps down
The mangy cats growling in their cages
The bird-girl flapping and squawking around
The whole valley reeking of wet beast
Wet beast and rotten, sodden hay
Freak and brute creation
All packed up and on their way
The three dwarves peering from the wagon's hind
Moses says to Noah "We shoulda dug a deepa one"
Their grizzled faces like dying moons
Still dirty from the digging done
And Charlie the eldest of the three said
"I guess the Carny ain't gonna show"
And they were silent for a spell
Wishing they'd done a better job of burying Sorrow
And the company passed from the valley
Into higher ground
And the rain beat on the ridge and on the meadow
And on the mound
Until nothing was left, nothing left at all
Except the body of Sorrow
That rose in time
To float upon the surface of the eaten soil
And a murder of crows did circle 'round
First one, then the others flapping blackly down
And the carny's van still sat upon the edge
Tilting slowly as the firm ground turned to sludge
And the rain it hammered down
And the rain it hammered down
And the rain it hammered down
And the rain it hammered down
And no-one saw the Carny go
No-one saw the Carny go
No-one saw the Carny go
I say it's funny how things go
The weeks flew by
Until they moved on the show
Leaving his caravan behind
It was parked out on the south east ridge
And as the company crossed the bridge
With the first rain filling the bone-dry river bed
It shone, just so, upon the edge
"Away, away, we're sad" they said
Dog-boy, Atlas, Mandrake, the geeks, the hired hands
There was not one among them that did not cast an eye behind
In the hope that the carny would return to his own kind
The Carny left behind a horse, all skin and bone
That he named "Sorrow"
And it was a shallow, unmarked grave
That that old nag was laid
In the then parched meadow
And it was the dwarves were given the task of digging the ditch
And laying the nag's carcass in the ground
While boss Bellini, waved his smoking pistol around
Saying "The nag was dead meat"
"We can't afford to carry dead weight"
While the whole company standing about
Not making a sound
And turning to the dwarves perched on the enclosure gate
The boss says "Bury this lump of crow bait"
And the rain came hammering down
Everybody running for their wagons
Tying all the canvas flaps down
The mangy cats growling in their cages
The bird-girl flapping and squawking around
The whole valley reeking of wet beast
Wet beast and rotten, sodden hay
Freak and brute creation
All packed up and on their way
The three dwarves peering from the wagon's hind
Moses says to Noah "We shoulda dug a deepa one"
Their grizzled faces like dying moons
Still dirty from the digging done
And Charlie the eldest of the three said
"I guess the Carny ain't gonna show"
And they were silent for a spell
Wishing they'd done a better job of burying Sorrow
And the company passed from the valley
Into higher ground
And the rain beat on the ridge and on the meadow
And on the mound
Until nothing was left, nothing left at all
Except the body of Sorrow
That rose in time
To float upon the surface of the eaten soil
And a murder of crows did circle 'round
First one, then the others flapping blackly down
And the carny's van still sat upon the edge
Tilting slowly as the firm ground turned to sludge
And the rain it hammered down
And the rain it hammered down
And the rain it hammered down
And the rain it hammered down
And no-one saw the Carny go
No-one saw the Carny go
No-one saw the Carny go
I say it's funny how things go
Lyrics submitted by Girgo, edited by BluesBison
The Carny Lyrics as written by Nicholas Cave
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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^I'm not calling Mr. Cave a liar, but if there's one thing I know, it's that whenever you try and explain your art, it sounds way less clever than letting it speak for itself.
I don't think this is just a story about a horse dying. It's about exploitation of the weak, and, like the message of many songs, how everything is everything.