RED SNAKES

Laura Marling (possibly co-written by Mike Lindsay)

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In an article on Substack titled Rilke, Red Snakes and The Mount of Ancient Song (18 July 2024), Marling wrote: "I have a band, called LUMP, with Mike Lindsay, and on our second record there is a song called 'Red Snakes', within which is the line ‘at the mount of ancient song’. I believe I lifted it directly from the Tenth Elegy. Or, I should say, believed. Because no such line exists. But I was absolutely certain I remembered the feeling of reading it. One of the more annoying problems of translation is that it’s very hard to google the line you’re looking for as it will have innumerable variations. I searched my entire collection of books by or about Rilke and found nothing. Finally, I remember a book I read when I was first getting my head around psychoanalysis: Psychoanalysis and Culture, A Kleinien Perspective. I highly recommend it as a first step into reading about culture from a psychoanalytic perspective."

LYRICS

Grew enemies to avoid pain.
Sold them in pills for your own gain.
You’ll never get back to the old ways...
So despise what you’ve lost, for your own sake.

Stood in a pool full of red snakes.
Up to your knees in a night lake.
Unsure if you knew what was at stake.
Fully prepared for a tough break.

At the mount of ancient song,
Where you grieve for what is gone:
A thousand hands, countless plans
And youth.

As sure as you were of the earth's place
At the terrible center of black space.
Now that you’ve come to renounce faith
In emerging from bodies with no name.

Wandered in search of a new age.
Slipped on the rivers of old rage.
Parted, at last, from an old weight,
Sprang from the water with no shame.

At the mount of ancient song,
Where you grieve for what is gone:
A thousand hands, countless plans
And youth.