Lyrics for A Sort Of Homecoming as interpreted by archmastermind

A Sort Of Homecoming Lyrics
And you know it's time to go
Through the sleet and driving snow
Across the fields of mourning
Lights in the distance

And you hunger for the time
Time to heal, desire, time
And your earth moves beneath
Your own dream landscape

Oh, oh, oh
On borderland, we run
I'll be there
I'll be there
Tonight
A high road
A high road out from here

The city walls are all pulled down
The dust, a smoke screen all around
See faces ploughed like fields
That once gave no resistance

And we live by the side of the road
On the side of a hill
As the valleys explode
Dislocated, suffocated
The land grows weary of its own

Oh come away, oh come away
Oh come, oh come away, say I
Oh come away, oh come away
Oh come, oh come away, say I

Oh, oh, oh
On borderland, we run
And still we run
We run and don't look back
I'll be there
I'll be there
Tonight
Tonight

I'll be there tonight, I believe
I'll be there, somehow
I'll be there, tonight
Tonight

Oh come away, I say, say oh my
Oh come away, I say

The wind will crack in winter time
This bomb-blast lightning waltz
No spoken words, just a scream, yeah, oh

Tonight we'll build a bridge
Across the sea and land
See the sky, the burning rain
She will die and live again
Tonight

And your heart beats so slow
Through the rain and fallen snow
Across the fields of mourning
Lights in the distance

Oh, don't sorrow, no don't weep
For tonight, at last
I am coming home
I am coming home

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Arianrhod
10-16-2002

Rated 0 
This song is my coming home song. I was forced to move interstate, and this was one of my coming home anthems, I put it on a tape for my friend, and listened to it as much as I could.
It's a great song. The lyrics are so provocative.

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rednight1972
10-16-2004

Rated 0 
I knew this song was about Ireland, but living in Israel in 8 years I could understand the perspective. I felt it was a metaphor for people and the land being tired of a conflict and in your heart you wanted to go to a better place. So even if it wasn't a physical place, it still existed in your mind. Hence "A Sort of Homecoming".

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rednight1972
10-16-2004

Rated 0 
Something I forgot to mention in my previous post is that I grew up in the US till I was 10 and when I finally got to go home to the USA from Israel I played this song all the time. It really had special meaning to me to be leaving the bombs, bloodshed and tears behind and to be going home.

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ICantLeaveU2Behind
04-10-2005

Rated 0 
vertigo has the same bass line almost the same baseline as this. i wonder what drove u2 to use a riff that they hadn't used for 15 years.

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PaulDavidHewsoncol
06-12-2005

Rated 0 
This is one of my favorite u2 songs. I am very sad that people don't even know this song. It was a very touching song and caused me to sing terrible reditions of their songs in the shower. As you can see, people are probably too busy downloading "Hollaback Girl" on their ipods to listen to real music.

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judyleondearayaes
07-11-2005

Rated 0 
I love this song,one of my favorite u2 songs,from their best album,im not really sure what it means

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U2girl
08-31-2005

Rated 0 
this is such an awesome song. i don't even know the studio version, i have wide awake in america and this song is so incredible on there. i relate to it not in a literal sense, necessarily but being a teenager i relate to it in a sense of finding myself and discovering life and what is important to me. i can also relate to it in a literal sense as i feel like where i live is not actually my home, so sometimes leaving and going somewhere else is a sort of homecoming to me.

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U2girl
08-31-2005

Rated 0 
and i would like to add that i agree with PaulDavidHewsoncol, its too bad more people dont know about this song and lots of other awesome songs. i dont understand the appeal in todays music at all. personally, i think its terrible, and i was born the same year rattle and hum came out.

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truegrit
09-03-2006

Rated 0 
"A sort of a home coming" is so special to me. It's got to be in my top 5 u2 songs. The part that goes " see the sky the burning rain, she will die and live again" reminds me of my mother who died back in '86. This song helped me thru it, and still comforts me. God, I was so young back then. These words are still so poignant to me. The words to this song flow out over my tongue like blood flows thru my viens. My life blood. " No spoken words, just a screem"...

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Banjaxed08
12-25-2006

Rated 0 
This song came on the radio after Hurricane Katrina. I was driving to my nieghborhood to see if I still had a home. It was so odd for "A Sort of Homecoming" to come on the radio, but it was very weird for it to come on as I really was having my own homecoming. Even though my house is gone, this song is very important to me... I'll never forget that day I was driving home with this song playing, the ocean looking so calm, and that feeling of peace and acceptance come over me.

I love U2.

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mieolhc
02-21-2007

Rated 0 
ok, i could be completely wrong about this, but i always thot that this song was about, like, a really big disaster, either a war, or a famine ("as the valley explodes" "the land grows weary of its own") and then the refugees having to leave their home ("And you know it's time to go/ Through the sleet and driving snow/ Across the fields of mourning/ Lights in the distance" "oh come away") and then, their homecoming ("Oh, don't sorrow, no don't weep/ For tonight, at last/ I am coming home/ I am coming home"). but their home really isn't the same anymore, so it's only a "sort of homecoming".

also, Unforgettable Fire has one of the coolest album covers EVER. wat is that a picture of????

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sploch
03-16-2007

Rated 0 
mieolhc, the photo is of Moydrum Castle, Co. Westmeath, Ireland.

I agree with your interpretation about ASOH being about a disaster. I think it tries to capture the feelings of the doomed survivors of total nuclear war, as they wait to be killed by radiation sickness/nuclear winter/etc. The destruction of this world creates a eurphoric anticipation of the next (i.e. the afterlife). Nicely done, I think - it's an unusual lyrical theme.

Pre-death euphoria is also captured in "Hallelujah here she comes" (b-side of Desire).

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Duveroux
04-10-2007

Rated 0 
I've never heard this song until I needed a song for a school project. I needed something that ended the day "with the fat promise of a new one to come." -to quote directly from the book. And I tell you, it fulfills its purpose.

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marke
07-19-2007

Rated 0 
This is one of my all time favorite U2 songs (bono has mentioned it is one of his). This song used to remind me of the conflict in Bosnia during the 1980's 1990's... To me it is the story of a man coming home after war, longing for his family or his wife/lover, thoughts going through his mind as he travels home. I think the versions from Unforgettable and Wide Awake in America are both great (the version from WAIA really captures what U2 is all about-- "build a bridge")...

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cuzn_dupree
03-24-2008

Rated 0 
Going to heaven. A "sort of" homecoming.
Across the fields of mourning
Lights in the distance
She will die and live again
Tonight
Oh, don't sorrow, no don't weep
For tonight, at last
I am coming home
I am coming home
Just beautiful

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iheartlarry
06-23-2008

Rated 0 
Can anybody tell me why in the lyrics that come in The Unforgettable Fire CD it says that it's a Blue Mountain Song?? Didn't Bono write it? Thanks.

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Gary_L
10-20-2008

Rated +1 
The title comes from Jewish poet Paul Celan, who wrote: "Poetry is a sort of homecoming."

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Smokler
11-23-2008

Rated 0 
One of the most important songs in my life. I know its about Ireland in the 1980s but to me, especially since I always listened to it before traveling, its about passage and reconciliation, growing older and the awful responsibility of time.

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Tnspieler1012
02-13-2009

Rated 0 
Because I have way too much time on my hands, I like looking at most of their albums as a story being played out. You have the innocence of childhood and spirtuality (boy into October) then he grows up, get's drafted, and witnesses the horrors of war (war)...
I see "The Unforgettable Fire" as the the unsteady, post-traumatic return home. It's a shaky, flavorless, spacy album with ambiguously poetic lyrics (no where more evident than in the stretch of promenade-Elvis Presley and America).

I think 'A Sort of Homecoming' is about coming home from "war" (both the album and the literal sense), while reflecting back on it and how people have been changed by it. While most of the chorus lyrics are self explanatory, and about the hunger to finally return home. Lyrics like:

"...faces ploughed like fields That once gave no resistance...Dislocated, suffocated"
Emphasizes the numbness and emotional disconnection that soldiers incur in warfare and post-traumatic depression. These lyrics are a reoccuring theme throughout the album.




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enamorata
09-11-2009

Rated 0 
Used to listen to this a lot at school. Very poetic wording and love the unique sound landscape. A+

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