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"
I watch the work of my kin, bold and boyful
Toying somewhere between love and abuse
Calling to join them, the wretched and joyful
Shaking the wings of their terrible youths
Freshly disowned in some frozen devotion
No more alone or myself could I be
Lurched like a stray to the arms that were open
No shortage of sordid, no protest from me
With her sweetened breath, and her tongue so mean
She's the angel of small death and the codeine scene
With her straw-blonde hair, her arms hard and lean
She's the angel of small death and the codeine scene
Feeling more human and hooked on her flesh, I
Lay my heart down with the rest at her feet
Fresh from the fields, all fetor and fertile
It's bloody and raw, but I swear it is sweet
With her sweetened breath, and her tongue so mean
She's the angel of small death and the codeine scene
With her straw-blonde hair, her arms hard and lean
She's the angel of small death and the codeine scene
In leash-less confusion, I'll wander the concrete
Wonder if better now having survived
Jarring of judgement and reason's defeat the sweet
Heat of her breath in my mouth, I'm alive
With her sweetened breath, and her tongue so mean
She's the angel of small death and the codeine scene
With her straw-blonde hair, her arms hard and lean
She's the angel of small death and the codeine scene
With her sweetened breath, and her tongue so mean
She's the angel of small death and the codeine scene
With her straw-blonde hair, her arms hard and lean
She's the angel of small death and the codeine scene
Toying somewhere between love and abuse
Calling to join them, the wretched and joyful
Shaking the wings of their terrible youths
Freshly disowned in some frozen devotion
No more alone or myself could I be
Lurched like a stray to the arms that were open
No shortage of sordid, no protest from me
With her sweetened breath, and her tongue so mean
She's the angel of small death and the codeine scene
With her straw-blonde hair, her arms hard and lean
She's the angel of small death and the codeine scene
Feeling more human and hooked on her flesh, I
Lay my heart down with the rest at her feet
Fresh from the fields, all fetor and fertile
It's bloody and raw, but I swear it is sweet
With her sweetened breath, and her tongue so mean
She's the angel of small death and the codeine scene
With her straw-blonde hair, her arms hard and lean
She's the angel of small death and the codeine scene
In leash-less confusion, I'll wander the concrete
Wonder if better now having survived
Jarring of judgement and reason's defeat the sweet
Heat of her breath in my mouth, I'm alive
With her sweetened breath, and her tongue so mean
She's the angel of small death and the codeine scene
With her straw-blonde hair, her arms hard and lean
She's the angel of small death and the codeine scene
With her sweetened breath, and her tongue so mean
She's the angel of small death and the codeine scene
With her straw-blonde hair, her arms hard and lean
She's the angel of small death and the codeine scene
Lyrics submitted by michigansdiction, edited by bearpig77777, randy11242, teaspill, cr0wgrrl, Cjmclm, Maedhbh
Angel of Small Death & the Codeine Scene Lyrics as written by Andrew Hozier Byrne
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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@marycb It was never really a translation, honestly. When I try to figure out What A Song Is About it's more of a process of ripping it apart, cross-referencing, and reassembling it to see if it still stands than any process of trying to make disparate things fit. If there are missing pieces I tend to just let things fall down and approach from another angle. (Yeah, I love a lot of songs where I will outright admit I don't know entirely what they're about.)
For this song, I basically started with the premise of, "Okay, this song's about a woman. What do we know about her?"
And then I assembled a list:
Her arms are wide open and readily available. She's sordid, and/or surrounded by sordid things. Her breath is sweet. She says mean things. Her hair is straw blonde. Her arms are hard and lean.
Which was all fine.
Next, it was "How does she interact with people?"
She's connected to the codeine scene. People love and abuse her, or are loved and abused by her. She makes people feel disowned, devoted, and frozen. She makes people feel alone and like themself. She makes people run to her. She makes people passively accept the unacceptable. She makes people feel more human. She gets people hooked. People sacrifice their hearts to her, and she keeps them as offerings. She's connected to fields somehow. She does something that is bloody and raw, but sweet. She produces a lack of discipline and confusion in people. She harms people. She removes people's judgement and higher reasoning skills.
And at that point I basically went, "How on Earth does this line up with sex?" and couldn't get it to work (the fields, blood, and associations with being alone and still were particularly problematic for me). So I looked at the song for other options. Given an opiate was already mentioned as being important, I went through and tested my lists with that as a possibility for who the woman/angel being talked about was. It worked, so I looked at the song to see how it fit. Then an active narrative fell out, which I wasn't even expecting to happen, so I summarily rammed my head into a desk.
Sorry so long, but I find people tend to be confused by my thought processes unless I'm really explicit and cover all the steps.