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We Could Walk Together Lyrics
We could walk together
In the jade and the coolness of the evening light
And watch the crowds serenely flow
Through carnivals of shop windows where elm trees sigh
The summer's heat is fading
And the clown on the golden lawn holds out his hand
And out there on the fading day
The members of a strange parade play sarabandes
Like a silver ring thrown into the flood of my heart
With the moon high above the motorway
I have searched for all your fragrance in the silent
dark
Is that okay?
So why don't we stick together
With our eyes so full of evening and amphetamine
And watch the fools go rolling on through
Still fields as the darkness falls on England green
In the jade and the coolness of the evening light
And watch the crowds serenely flow
Through carnivals of shop windows where elm trees sigh
And the clown on the golden lawn holds out his hand
And out there on the fading day
The members of a strange parade play sarabandes
With the moon high above the motorway
I have searched for all your fragrance in the silent
dark
Is that okay?
With our eyes so full of evening and amphetamine
And watch the fools go rolling on through
Still fields as the darkness falls on England green
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This is a ballad dedicated only secondarily to the anonymous lover being courted in shadows of evening and primarily to a modern England (see the references to Adderall and motorways) descending into the shadows of its empire.
Like the Kinks’ “Living on a Thin Line,” these lyrics hint at a nostalgia for traditional English mise-en-scène (“Watch the crowds serenely flow through carnivals of shop windows where elm trees sigh”). But unlike “Living on a Thine Line,” which stridently affirms a new moral imperative to do the things “we wouldn’t do” that “really matter,” the meaning of “We Could Walk Together” is oblique. And unlike the Kinks, the Clientele—a band sometimes pictured anachronistically as knights in shining armour—seem resigned to England’s fall (“Watch the fools go rolling on through still fields as the darkness falls on England green”).
As the song reaches these last lyrics with its references to fools and darkness falling, the guitar embarks on a solo of bitter chords that seem to change the song’s key to minor. But upon closer examination, the song was in minor from the start. Only the mood changed from sweet melancholy to grief.
[Edit: Added conjunction for clarity.]