Mercy Street

Tonight I had the pleasure of watching ‘Daughters Experience Peter Gabriel: Mercy Street Live. The SO album, will always be one of my favorites. It’s a tremendously powerful production. Peter at his finest. His words, his voice, his melodies, shine like diamonds.

I was lucky to see him perform these songs during his SO Tour in Detroit. I can see him before my eyes. And speaking of eyes, In Your Eyes is a treasure. A song of longing. Of being back in someone’s heart, soul, and eyes. Wanting everything to be whole, alive and fresh again.

Mercy Street is another song packed with emotion. Seeing this particular performance really tugged at my heart strings, this evening. As I stated on their YouTube channel, “I hadn’t seen this particular video and to be honest, it gave me goosebumps. Not only is he a singer, but an actor.” His feelings come across like no other performer. Emotions exude from every pore in his body. You feel what he feels. He takes you to another level of consciousness.

Before I watched this video, I wasn’t aware of the inspiration for Peter’s song. I now know that it sprang from a poem by Anne Sexton, who then committed suicide, no longer able to face life.

45 Mercy Street by Anne Sexton

In my dream,

drilling into the marrow

of my entire bone,

my real dream,

I’m walking up and down Beacon Hill

searching for a street sign –

namely MERCY STREET.

Not there.

I try the Back Bay.

Not there.

Not there.

And yet I know the number.

45 Mercy Street.

I know the stained-glass window

of the foyer,

the three flights of the house

with its parquet floors.

I know the furniture and

mother, grandmother, great-grandmother,

the servants.

I know the cupboard of Spode

the boat of ice, solid silver,

where the butter sits in neat squares

like strange giant’s teeth

on the big mahogany table.

I know it well.

Not there.

Where did you go?

45 Mercy Street,

with great-grandmother

kneeling in her whale-bone corset

and praying gently but fiercely

to the wash basin,

at five A.M.

at noon

dozing in her wiggy rocker,

grandfather taking a nap in the pantry,

grandmother pushing the bell for the downstairs maid,

and Nana rocking Mother with an oversized flower

on her forehead to cover the curl

of when she was good and when she was…

And where she was begat

and in a generation

the third she will beget,

me,

with the stranger’s seed blooming

into the flower called Horrid.

I walk in a yellow dress

and a white pocketbook stuffed with cigarettes,

enough pills, my wallet, my keys,

and being twenty-eight, or is it forty-five?

I walk. I walk.

I hold matches at street signs

for it is dark,

as dark as the leathery dead

and I have lost my green Ford,

my house in the suburbs,

two little kids

sucked up like pollen by the bee in me

and a husband

who has wiped off his eyes

in order not to see my inside out

and I am walking and looking

and this is no dream

just my oily life

where the people are alibis

and the street is unfindable for an

entire lifetime.

Pull the shades down –

I don’t care!

Bolt the door, mercy,

erase the number,

rip down the street sign,

what can it matter,

what can it matter to this cheapskate

who wants to own the past

that went out on a dead ship

and left me only with paper?

Not there.

I open my pocketbook,

as women do,

and fish swim back and forth

between the dollars and the lipstick.

I pick them out,

one by one

and throw them at the street signs,

and shoot my pocketbook

into the Charles River.

Next I pull the dream off

and slam into the cement wall

of the clumsy calendar

I live in,

my life,

and its hauled up

notebooks.

Putting the song into context, gives it even more meaning, because he truly captured the tortured words of Anne.

Mercy Street by Peter Gabriel

Looking down on empty streets, all she can see

Are the dreams all made solid

Are the dreams all made real

All of the buildings, all of those cars

Were once just a dream

In somebody’s head

She pictures the broken glass, she pictures the steam

She pictures a soul

With no leak at the seam

Lets take the boat out

Wait until darkness

Let’s take the boat out

Wait until darkness comes

Nowhere in the corridors of pale green and grey

Nowhere in the suburbs

In the cold light of day

There in the midst of it so alive and alone

Words support like bone

Dreaming of mercy street

Wear your inside out

Dreaming of mercy

In your daddy’s arms again

Dreaming of mercy street.

‘swear they moved that sign

Dreaming of mercy

In your daddy’s arms

Pulling out the papers from the drawers that slide smooth

Tugging at the darkness, word upon word

Confessing all the secret things in the warm velvet box

To the priest-he’s the doctor

He can handle the shocks

Dreaming of the tenderness-the tremble in the hips

Of kissing Mary’s lips

Dreaming of mercy street

Wear your insides out

Dreaming of mercy

In your daddy’s arms again

Dreaming of mercy st.

‘swear they moved that sign

Looking for mercy

In your daddy’s arms

Mercy, mercy, looking for mercy

Mercy, mercy, looking for mercy

Anne, with her father is out in the boat

Riding the water

Riding the waves on the sea

As an aside, this song always made me long for my childhood. My father died suddenly and unexpectedly when I was twelve. So, each time I listen to Peter sing, “Looking for mercy in your daddy’s arms again” it makes me yearn for those simple, sweet days growing up in Detroit – missing a man who truly embodied happiness and a love for life, despite all he experienced in his fifty short years, including 32 months in Europe during WWII as a combat engineer. I miss you dad. The world needs more people like you.