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Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.
Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.
Temptation's page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover
That you'd just be
One more person crying.
So don't fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing.
As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred.
Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.
While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.
An' though the rules of the road have been lodged
It's only people's games that you got to dodge
And it's alright, Ma, I can make it.
Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.
You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.
A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not fergit
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.
Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.
For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.
While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him.
While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.
But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him.
Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony.
While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer's pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.
My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me?
And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.
Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.
Temptation's page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover
That you'd just be
One more person crying.
So don't fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing.
As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred.
Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.
While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.
An' though the rules of the road have been lodged
It's only people's games that you got to dodge
And it's alright, Ma, I can make it.
Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.
You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.
A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not fergit
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.
Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.
For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.
While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him.
While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.
But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him.
Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony.
While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer's pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.
My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me?
And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.
Lyrics submitted by roger wilco, edited by Mellow_Harsher
Track duration: 07:29
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“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
I think the opening line is more of an armaggedon scenario where Darkness falls across the earth in apocalyptic destruction that even the rich cannot hide from blocking out the sun and moon where darkness reigns across the earth from which there is no escaping. It effects us all. EIther you will be born agin or you will perish in the darkness. Though this swong preludes his
christian years there seems a connecdtion of some sort to biblical prophecy. We have contradicting lessons being taught but at some time we all most stand naked in the light of truth..
However, what Dylan is most likely referring to here is Arthur Koestler's 1940 novel "Darkness at Noon" which is an anti-totalitarian book about how ideology is used to justify terrible acts. Since the book came the phrase is often used in this way by political philosophers.
Its proof that Dylan was a true artist. Have you listened to the version on the bootleg series vol4 1965 at the Phil Harmonic? Its a little longer and i think it really brings out the heart of dylan, he is so choked up by it that he misses a word or two and cant even remember how to start the next song.
You lose yourself, you reappear, you suddenly find you've got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near, when a trembling distant voice unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear that somebody thinks they've really found you.
Is about one's early experiences with psychedelic drugs, especially LSD. No matter how much you may have prepared for you first acid trip, or if you've smoked weed extensively before that trip, or listened to what others who have already had the experience tell you, it doesn't prepare you for the "startling" sensory/perceptual and flow-of-consciousness changes that occur during the experience.
As for the opening verse ("Darkness at the break of noon," etc.), Dylan sets up some stark contrasts (darkness at a time of day associated with broad daylight, the knowing and sudden violence of a prison inmate's shank ("the handmade blade") directly played off against the innocence of a child's party toy) to demonstrate that in a time of complexity and confusion, everything serves to obfuscate and bewilder (the blade and the balloon together eclipse both the sun and moon) and to try to reduce all these things to a simple set of solutions is a fool's errand ("there is no sense in trying"). Even having money ("even the silver spoon") will not insulate you from the reality of life in the contemporary era.
The third verse ("Temptation's page flies out the door/you follow, find yourself at war...") may signal Dylan's own ambivalence about his own newfound fame and fortune. Just a few years before, he was an ambitious kid with a guitar hoping to break into the NY folkie/coffeehouse scene; at the time of this song (1965), he not only was the recognized biggest star in commercial folk, he was identified as "the voice of his generation" and had transcended purist folk by going electric.
The choruses are meant to be tongue-in-cheek reassurances: don't fear, I mean no harm, it's alright ma I'm only sighing/I can make it/I've got nothing (ma) to live up to/they may put my head in a guillotine if they suss my thoughts but It's life and life only. Don't worry, the choruses say, we're OK, just doomed, that's all.
The first verse after the first chorus ("As some warn victory some downfall...") reflects Dylan's ambivalence about the increasingly militant politics of the mid-'60s. As the Vietnam War heated up and as Black Power advocates became more assertive against the MLKing pacifists in the civil rights movement, some on the Left began to hint that some in power needed to die, while the more pacifist wings of the civil rights, New Left, and antiwar movements warned that resorting to violence would be destructive and self-defeating: "those that call for all who should be killed to crawl, while others say don't hate nothin' at all except hatred." Dylan himself had doubts about political orthodoxies of all kinds; on the other hand, he had aggressive and hostile impulses, as anyone who has seen old tapes of his interviews with members of the press in '65 and '66 can attest. (He quite simply was a bully for bullying's sake to poor, unsuspecting Horace Freeland Judson, now a respected author of general interest books about science ("The Eight Day of Creation" and others) but then some poor slob writing for Time magazine who sought out an interview with Dylan in 1965 and, poor fellow, was unfortunate enough to get one.)
There is far more in this absolutely brilliant and multiple-meaninged song, but I've said enough for now.
Darkness at the break of noon - its time to shoot up its dark/ coming down
Shadows even the silver spoon - you use a spoon to dissolve heroine
The handmade blade, the child's balloon - the needle and the balloon that heroine is usually kept in
Eclipses both the sun and moon - i personally wouldn't know what it feel like but that's what it must feel like
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying. - He's a addict, no sense in trying to help him/ or help himself