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"
When when you were blind, you'd touch things for their shape
Have faith in wordless knowledge, have faith in wordless knowledge
Well I can tell you about the river or we could just get in
The body the rain made of our days before we knew
We are swimming in the rivers of the rains of our days before we knew
And it's hard to explain what I was doing all thinking before you
I guess I was a decent man holdin' on, following the river from above like a bird
Have faith in wordless knowledge and the fallen stars, they flew too
And I knew they were sewing something, something well made for me and you
We are swimming in the rivers of the rains of our days before we knew
And it's hard to explain what I was doing all thinking before you
The city was a fist, I lived on its wrist and I took myself a good long look around
And the river grew higher and wider, deeper and darker as I was closing in
And it led me to you which led me to say "let's get in"
We got in the river and it groped us, made us think of sex between us
At a time in our lives, oh, before we knew
We were swimming in the rivers of the rains of our days before we knew
And it's hard to explain what I was doing all thinking before you
And that beautiful thing you said lying in bed
About all the things I could think of at the end of the day
But of all the places my mind could go
It always comes loping back to you
We are swimming in the river of the rains of our days before we knew
So meet me in the ocean and we'll ride the waves from the rivers to the ocean
Each wave a lounging panther, sharp-eyed and true
We are swimming in the rivers of the rains of our days before we knew
And it's hard to explain what I was doing all thinking before you
Have faith in wordless knowledge, have faith in wordless knowledge
Have faith in wordless knowledge, have faith in wordless knowledge
Well I can tell you about the river or we could just get in
The body the rain made of our days before we knew
We are swimming in the rivers of the rains of our days before we knew
And it's hard to explain what I was doing all thinking before you
I guess I was a decent man holdin' on, following the river from above like a bird
Have faith in wordless knowledge and the fallen stars, they flew too
And I knew they were sewing something, something well made for me and you
We are swimming in the rivers of the rains of our days before we knew
And it's hard to explain what I was doing all thinking before you
The city was a fist, I lived on its wrist and I took myself a good long look around
And the river grew higher and wider, deeper and darker as I was closing in
And it led me to you which led me to say "let's get in"
We got in the river and it groped us, made us think of sex between us
At a time in our lives, oh, before we knew
We were swimming in the rivers of the rains of our days before we knew
And it's hard to explain what I was doing all thinking before you
And that beautiful thing you said lying in bed
About all the things I could think of at the end of the day
But of all the places my mind could go
It always comes loping back to you
We are swimming in the river of the rains of our days before we knew
So meet me in the ocean and we'll ride the waves from the rivers to the ocean
Each wave a lounging panther, sharp-eyed and true
We are swimming in the rivers of the rains of our days before we knew
And it's hard to explain what I was doing all thinking before you
Have faith in wordless knowledge, have faith in wordless knowledge
Lyrics submitted by joaniebats, edited by smallwonderrobot, Mechanical Bird
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this is the most beautiful song I have ever heard, the greatest love song and love song to life itself. I don't know if it was intended that way but to me it is and I wish more people could hear what I hear.