I've thought of this song as being about death and loss - inspired initially by watching a dog.
The narrator is watching sadie bury a bone, the act of which speaks of three things:
1) the dog's intrinsic faith it will be able to come back later to retreive the bone when perhaps it will never return
2) the fact that after we die the same thing will happen to us - our bones will be buried
3)the telephone is referred to as the 'dog-and-bone'
this brings her on to a conversation (on the 'dog-and-bone') that she's constantly having about eternity and mortality - and this conversation is referred to throughout the song -"gnawing on the telephone", "all day long we talk about mercy", "we spoke up in turns til the silence crept over me", "i'll tell you tomorrow".
during this conversation that we hear snippets of/references to throughout the song, it seems she is silenced - silenced in the face of her mortality.
the images of everything she's worked for burning like weeds, of losing what we don't hold on to, of all that we've got being scattered or blowing in the wind - these are very biblical images of the shortness of our time and the ephemeral nature of mere 'things' as opposed to love and hope which last forever ("the love we hold will never grow cold only taciturn")
the very last verse appears to be her accepting the fact she will die and handing over all the things she holds dear that she knows will not last ("all that i've got i tie in a knot that i lay at your feet" - the knot being a reference to never forgetting/eternally remembering). in the end, the conversation went silent but this didn't mean it was over - it meant she was reverently accepting it.
and at the very end she exhorts sadie to exhume the bone - dig it back up again - because the dog doesn't know that it will be able to return later so it should probably just enjoy the bone now - as the biblical reference goes "store up not your riches where moth and rust can destroy". she's telling us not to rely on the future but to live in the now, to accept and respect our mortality by letting go of the things we hold onto too tightly and to put our faith only in the things that last forever, even if silently.
I've thought of this song as being about death and loss - inspired initially by watching a dog.
The narrator is watching sadie bury a bone, the act of which speaks of three things: 1) the dog's intrinsic faith it will be able to come back later to retreive the bone when perhaps it will never return 2) the fact that after we die the same thing will happen to us - our bones will be buried 3)the telephone is referred to as the 'dog-and-bone'
this brings her on to a conversation (on the 'dog-and-bone') that she's constantly having about eternity and mortality - and this conversation is referred to throughout the song -"gnawing on the telephone", "all day long we talk about mercy", "we spoke up in turns til the silence crept over me", "i'll tell you tomorrow".
during this conversation that we hear snippets of/references to throughout the song, it seems she is silenced - silenced in the face of her mortality.
the images of everything she's worked for burning like weeds, of losing what we don't hold on to, of all that we've got being scattered or blowing in the wind - these are very biblical images of the shortness of our time and the ephemeral nature of mere 'things' as opposed to love and hope which last forever ("the love we hold will never grow cold only taciturn")
the very last verse appears to be her accepting the fact she will die and handing over all the things she holds dear that she knows will not last ("all that i've got i tie in a knot that i lay at your feet" - the knot being a reference to never forgetting/eternally remembering). in the end, the conversation went silent but this didn't mean it was over - it meant she was reverently accepting it.
and at the very end she exhorts sadie to exhume the bone - dig it back up again - because the dog doesn't know that it will be able to return later so it should probably just enjoy the bone now - as the biblical reference goes "store up not your riches where moth and rust can destroy". she's telling us not to rely on the future but to live in the now, to accept and respect our mortality by letting go of the things we hold onto too tightly and to put our faith only in the things that last forever, even if silently.