Political World Lyrics
Love don't have any place.
We're living in times where men commit crimes
And crime don't have a face
Icicles hanging down,
Wedding bells ring and angels sing,
clouds cover up the ground.
Wisdom is thrown into jail,
It rots in a cell, is misguided as hell
Leaving no one to pick up a trail.
Where mercy walks the plank,
Life is in mirrors, death disappears
Up the steps into the nearest bank.
Where courage is a thing of the past
Houses are haunted, children are unwanted
The next day could be your last.
The one we can see and can feel
But there's no one to check, it's all a stacked deck,
We all know for sure that it's real.
In the cities of lonesome fear,
Little by little you turn in the middle
But you're never why you're here.
Under the microscope,
You can travel anywhere and hang yourself there
You always got more than enough rope.
Turning and a'thrashing about,
As soon as you're awake, you're trained to take
What looks like the easy way out.
Where peace is not welcome at all,
It's turned away from the door to wander some more
Or put up against the wall.
Everything is hers or his,
Climb into the frame and shout God's name
But you're never sure what it is.
In his memoir CHRONICLES vol 1, Dylan explains that he was suffering a dry creative period as well as an injured hand. He was getting uninterested in making music and thinking he might quit music altogether and become a businessman (!). Then suddenly this song (Political World) came to him all at once. He wrote the song in one sitting, with many more lyrics left over, and it re-ignited his creative energy. Oh Mercy was the result, and the rest is ... history, I guess.
This song should be interpreted considering the following quote from "Union Sundown" (Album: Infidels):
Democracy don't rule the world, You'd better get that in your head. This world is ruled by violence But I guess that's better left unsaid.
I keep trying to find out what is making our world politial, how this works, and what would be the better, non-political character. It appears that political decisions are dominated by consderations of finding enough allies to have them pushed through. They are led by tactics. "Polticial world" tells us what gets lost when our decisions and our consciences are censored by political considerations.
Yes.
One gift of Dylan's art is can help us recognize the bonds of Samsara.
You say, :"I keep trying to to find out what is making out world political."
I would say it is mainly human nature.