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 hired a coach to take me from confusion to the plane
And though we shared a common space I know I'll never meet again
The driver with his eyebrows furrowed in the rear-view mirror
I read his name and it was plainly written Nathan La Franeer
I asked him would he hurry
But we crawled the canyons slowly
Through the buyers and the sellers
Through the burglar bells and the wishing wells
With gangs and girly shows
The ghostly garden grows
The cars and buses bustled through the bedlam of the day
I looked through window-glass at streets and Nathan grumbled at the grey
I saw an aging cripple selling Superman balloons
The city grated through chrome-plate
The clock struck slowly half-past-noon
Through the tunnel tiled and turning
Into daylight once again I am escaping
Once again goodbye
To symphonies and dirty trees
With parks and plastic clothes
The ghostly garden grows
He asked me for a dollar more
He cursed me to my face
He hated everyone who paid to ride
And share his common space
I picked my bags up from the curb
And stumbled to the door
Another man reached out his hand
Another hand reached out for more
And I filled it full of silver
And I left the fingers counting
And the sky goes on forever
Without meter maids and peace parades
You feed it all your woes
The ghostly garden grows
And though we shared a common space I know I'll never meet again
The driver with his eyebrows furrowed in the rear-view mirror
I read his name and it was plainly written Nathan La Franeer
I asked him would he hurry
But we crawled the canyons slowly
Through the buyers and the sellers
Through the burglar bells and the wishing wells
With gangs and girly shows
The ghostly garden grows
The cars and buses bustled through the bedlam of the day
I looked through window-glass at streets and Nathan grumbled at the grey
I saw an aging cripple selling Superman balloons
The city grated through chrome-plate
The clock struck slowly half-past-noon
Through the tunnel tiled and turning
Into daylight once again I am escaping
Once again goodbye
To symphonies and dirty trees
With parks and plastic clothes
The ghostly garden grows
He asked me for a dollar more
He cursed me to my face
He hated everyone who paid to ride
And share his common space
I picked my bags up from the curb
And stumbled to the door
Another man reached out his hand
Another hand reached out for more
And I filled it full of silver
And I left the fingers counting
And the sky goes on forever
Without meter maids and peace parades
You feed it all your woes
The ghostly garden grows
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the ghostly garden grows...
oooooo how i have loved this song over the decades