Variations on a Theme

The Last Judgment, a detail, Hieronymus Bosch



Below, the lyrics to Bob Dylan's song "Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" and an excerpt from Cormac McCarthy's novel, Blood Meridian.


The Blue Eyed Son
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fallOh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin'
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin'
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fallAnd what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin'
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin'
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fallOh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fallOh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin'
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner's face is always well-hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'
But I'll know my song well before I start singin'
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall
The Kid
He traveled about from place to place.He didn’t avoid the company of other men.He was treated with a certain deference as one who had got on to terms with life beyond what his years could account for.By now he’d come upon a horse and a revolver,The rudiments of an outfit.He worked at different trades.He had a Bible that he’d found at the mining camp, and he carried this book with him no word of which could he read.In his dark and frugal clothes some took him for a preacher,But he was no witness to them neither of things at hand nor things to come,He least of any man.There were remote places for news that he travelled in,And in those uncertain times men toasted the ascension of rulers already deposedAnd hailed the coronation of kings murdered and in their graves Of such corporal histories even as these he bore no tidings.And although it was the custom in that wilderness to stop with any traveler and exchange the news, he seemed to travel with no news at all,As if the doings of the world were too slanderous for him to truck withOr perhaps too trivial.He saw men killed with guns and with knives and with ropes,And he saw women fought over to the death whose value they themselves set at $2.He saw ships from the land of China chained in the small harborsAnd bales of tea and silk and spices broken open with swordsBy small yellow men with speech like cats.On that lonely coast where the steep rocks cradled a dark and muddersome seaHe saw vultures at their soaring whose wingspans so dwarfed all lesser birds that the eagles shrieking underneath were more like terns or plovers.He saw piles of a gold a hat would scarcely have covered, wagered on the turn of a card and lost. And he saw bears and lions turned loose in pits to fight wild bulls to the death.And he was twice in the city of San Francisco and twice saw it burn and never went back,Riding out on horseback to the south where all night the shape of the city burned against the sky and burned again in the black waters of the sea where dolphins rolled through the flames, fire on the lake through the fall of the burning timbers and the cries of the lost 


And now this.