Could the theme be “True Love” is dead?” about the Bob Dylan Poem I want youby Paul Shimel on Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 1:02pm “Could the theme be “True Love” is dead?” By Paul D. Shimel 4/26/2011 Here is the poem in its entirety. The short essay follows. BOB DYLAN - I WANT YOU – LYRICS The guilty undertaker signs The lonesome organ grinder cries The sliver saxophones say i should Refuse you Cracked bells and washed out horns Blow into my face with scorn It's not that way I wasn't born to lose you I want you I want you I want you So bad Drunken politicians leap Upon the streets where mothers weep Saviours lying fast asleep They wait for you I wait for them to interrupt me Drinking from my broken cup And ask for me To open up the gate for you I want you I want you I want you So bad All my fathers, they've gone down True love, they live without it And all their daughters, they still put me down Because I think about it I returned to the Queen of Spades Talked with my chambermaid She knows that I'm not afraid to look at her She's good to me There's nothing she don't see She knows where I would rather be But that doesn't matter Dancing child with his shiny suit He spoke to me, I took his flute No, I wasn't that cute to him Was I? I did it all because He lied Because he took you for a ride Because time was on his side Because I want you I want you I want you So bad I would like to explore that Dylan the Poet is talking about a larger theme of the 60s sexual revolution. I think the theme is "True Love is dead." The guilty undertaker (sexual revolution) signs that True Love is dead. The lonesome organ grinder, a symbol of the past, is separated and gets no true love just a "shaddup." The silver saxophones grease the music of bars and hook up scenes. The church bells and the wedding bells are cracked and the washed out horns are no longer triumphantly proclaiming true love. The poet cannot accept it. It's not that way. He wasn’t born into the generation in which true love died. “I want you”, He wants true love. The drunken politicians leap to suicide in the street. No love for politicians. Mothers weep for children lost to the streets and the revolution. Saviours would provide true and noble love, but they are sleeping. They expect Dylan the poet to open the gate of true love to them. All my father's refers to Dylan's poetical influences. The modernist poets disavow true love and embrace science and the wasteland. They disdain the romantic poets. The daughters of the sexual revolution are putting him down because he is romantically proclaiming that he wants True Love. They put him down because they are free, now from "True Love." He moves down the social ladder to the Queen of Spades, maybe a bar or hotel, the chambermaid, the hotel room maid or the waitress. He is not afraid to look at her to see if she still believes in True Love. She understands and agrees about True Love. She knows that he wants True Love, but he does not want it with her. The Queen of Spades could be a symbol of death. The chambermaid wants true love, but for him it would be death with the chambermaid. She would turn his true love into work. So, it does not matter because she is one of the sexual revolutionaries. The Dancing child with His suit could be Cupid or Pan with his Pan flute. Dylan is taking away Cupid's flute because he doesn't want lust or to temporarily be in capricious love. He took away the flute and wasn't cute to him. He took away the lust flute and wants True Love. The woman he wants was taken for a ride by cupid instead of True Love. Time is on his side because True Love might dissolve into a broken marriage over time. Dylan wants the real thing, everlasting true love. This is just my humble opinion of what this poem is about. I don’t claim to have anything other than my own point of view about this poem. I think of him as a "Great" American