Song Lyrics

If I Had A Heart

by Joni Mitchell

Holy war
Genocide
Suicide
Hate and cruelty...
How can this be holy?
If I had a heart I'd cry.

These ancient tales...
The good go to heaven
And the wicked ones burn in hell...
Ring the funeral bells!
If I had a heart I'd cry.

There's just too many people now
Too little land
Much too much desire
You feel so feeble now
It's so out of hand
Big bombs and barbed wire
We've set our lovely sky
Our lovely sky
On fire!

There's just too many people now
And too little land
Too much rage and desire
It makes you feel so feeble now
It's so out of hand-
Big bombs and barbed wire...
Can't you see
Our destiny?
We are making this Earth
Our funeral pyre!

Holy Earth
How can we heal you?
We cover you like a blight...
Strange birds of appetite...
If I had a heart I'd cry.
If I had a heart I'd cry.
If I had a heart I'd cry.

Footnotes

As told to Dan Ouellette:

I spent a couple of years in anger. I had fallen into a place where there was a lot of shaming and blaming, which I believe is the lowest level of evil. It conspires to having a bad heart - a heart poisoned with anger. I did a lot of weeping for what's happening to the earth when I was in my twenties. I could see a lot of things coming. Now I feel kind of inoculated to what people are now just discovering. If they're waking up and seeing it, they're in pain and they're feeling helpless.

This is a lamentation that asks the question, what can we do when we feel feeble, when we feel that things are so out of hand. How can we heal the holy earth? I may feel like a flea on a dinosaur, but I'm still kicking it in the shins.

Joni's handwritten lyrics, from the collection and courtesy of Lisa Wiley.

Joni Mitchell