Margaret Atwood - A Low Art lyrics

Now that I'm dead, I know everything this
Is what I wished would happen
But like so many of my wishes
It failed to come true
I know only a few factoids that
I didn't know before death is
Much too high a price to pay
For the satisfaction of curiosity
Needless to say

Since being dead - since achieving
This state of bonelessness, liplessness
Breastlessness - I've learned som things I
Would rather not know
As one does when listening at
Windoes or opening other people's
Letters you'd think you'd like to
Read minds? Think again

Down here everyone arrives with a sack, like
The sacks used to keep winds in


But each of these sacks if full
Of words - words you've
Spoken, words you've heard, words that
Have been said about you some
Sacks are very small, others
Large my own is of reasonable size
Though a lot of the words in it
Concern my eminent husband what a fool
He made of me, some say it was a specialty of
His: making fools he got
A way with everything
Which was another one of
His specialties: getting away

He was always so plausible
Many people have believed
This version of events was the true one
Give or take a few murders
A few beautiful seductresses
A few one-eyed monsters even I believed him
From time to
Time i knew he was tricky and a liar
I just didn't think he would
Play his tricks and
Try out his lies on me hadn't I been
Faithful? Hadn't I waited, and
Waited, and waited, despite the temptation
- almost the compulsion - to do otherwise?
And what did I amount to
Once the official version gained
Ground? An edifying legend a stick
Used to beat other
Women with why couldn't they
Be as considerate, as
Trustworthy, as all-suffering as I
Had been? That
Was the line they took, the singers
The yarn-spinners don't follow
My example, I want to scream in your ears -
Yes, yours! But when I try to scream
I sound like an owl

Of course I had inklings, about his
Slipperiness, his wiliness, his foxiness
His - how can I put
This? - his unscrupulousness
But I turned a blind eye i kept my
Mouth shut or, if I opened it
I sang praises i didn't contradict, i didn't
Ask awkward questions, I didn't dig deep i
Wanted happy endings in those days
And happy endings are best achieved
By keeping the right
Doors locked and going to
Sleep during the rampages

But after the main events were over
And things had become less legendary
I realised how many people were laughing at
Me behind my back - how
They were jeering, making dirty
Jokes about me, jokes both clean and dirty
How they were turning me into a
Story, or into several stories
Though not the kind of stories
I'd prefer to hear
About myself what can a woman do when
Scandalous gossip travels the world?
If she defends herself
She sounds guilty so I waited some more

Now that all the others have run out of air
It's my turn to do a little story
Making i owe it to myself i've
Had to work myself up to it: it's a low art
Tale-telling old women go in for it
Strolling beggars, blind
Singers, maidservants, children -
Folks with time on their hands once
People would have laughed if I'd
Tried to play the
Minstrel - there's nothing more
Preposterous than an
Aristocrat fumbling with the arts - but
Who cares about public opinion now?
The opinion of the people down
Here: the opinion of shadows
Of echoes so I'll spin a thread of my own

The difficulty is that I have no mouth
Through which I can speak i
Can't make myself be understood, not in
Your world, the world of bodies
Of tongues and fingers and most
Of the time I have no listeners
Not on your side of the river those
Of you who may catch the odd whisper, the
Odd squeak
So easily mistake my works for breezes
Rustling the dry reeds, for bats at twilight
For bad dreams

But, I've always been of
A determined nature patient
They used to call me i like to
See a thing through the end