"The Letter" as written by and Natalie A Merchant....
If I ever write this letter
The pages I could write
But I don't know where to send it
You have vanished
Heaven knows where you live
Heaven only knows
If I ever write this letter
Bitter words it would contain
Just and unrequited lover
Wishing she had never
Spoken your name
Had never known your name
But if I ever write this letter
The truth it would reveal
Knowing you brought me pleasure
How I'll often treasure
Moments that we knew
The precious, the few
The pages I could write
But I don't know where to send it
You have vanished
Heaven knows where you live
Heaven only knows
If I ever write this letter
Bitter words it would contain
Just and unrequited lover
Wishing she had never
Spoken your name
Had never known your name
But if I ever write this letter
The truth it would reveal
Knowing you brought me pleasure
How I'll often treasure
Moments that we knew
The precious, the few
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This song though I loved. The simplicity, and no chorus, just three simple verses of regret, reluctant gratitude, and a helplessness at not being able to reconnect.
I think it is interesting that this type of situation is so much rarer now due to our global connectivity. We can usually check up on friends and past "lovers" even if not connecting with them directly (Facebook, twitter...)We can "find them" there most of the time.
I think the song is about a deeper sort of love lost. Maybe a woman who became pregnant with a man's child that she didn't love. The father being robbed of becoming a part of his child's life and his child's future. The mother despised the man and the child after birth. The child was taken, and the father was left without a trace. Only Heaven knows. The father holds the few, precious moments they had and has a desire to write a letter to his child, revealing a truth in where the child comes from and the truth of the father's love, truly lost. The love from a father to a child should not be underestimated.
A life stolen from father and child, leaving the child believing only in what the mother and family surroundings feed the child's mind, creating a good background for believing your father didn't care for you until you start searching for yourself. Writing a song about writing a letter is such a beautiful expression of how far one will go to let the world know you have a message for someone, and hope that someone who's searching for a message comes across it. A letter with this much meaning would surely reveal the truth of it all, and it is possible to be holding a letter with strange meaning until you hear a song like this.
I have heard this song before, I love this album. It is my favorite. But I recently listened with my mind and soul wide open, and I take the meaning to a spiritual place, like a father who loved his son and a mother who acted in spite, never wishing to have had to speak either of their names, and possibly changing the child's name completely. Just because it could've happened.
If it did, I would imagine the father trying to find the right words, to deliver the message of who he is, where he is from. That he has always been loved, always been a buried treasure of the father. Lost loves are returned to you in Heaven.
In Harry Potter, there was a child born to this world who did not know his own name, and this could be from the same place of loss...wanting them to know who they are. Love and Peace!