When the Light Appears
Lento
You'll bare your bones you'll grow you'll pray you'll only know When the light appears, boy, when the light appears You'll sing & you'll love you'll praise blue heavens above When the light appears, boy, when the light appears You'll whimper & you'll cry you'll get yourself sick and sigh You'll sleep & you'll dream you'll only know what you mean When the light appears, boy, when the light appears You'll come & you'll go, you'll wander to and fro You'll go home in despair you'll wonder why'd you care You'll stammer & you'll lie you'll ask everybody why You'll cough and you'll pout you'll kick your toe with gout You'll jump you'll shout you'll knock you're friends about You'll bawl and you'll deny & announce your eyes are dry You'll roll and you'll rock you'll show your big hard cock You'll love and you'll grieve & one day you'll come believe As you whistle & you smile the lord made you worthwhile You'll preach and you'll glide on the pulpit in your pride Sneak & slide across the stage like a river in high tide You'll come fast or come on slow just the same you'll never know When the light appears, boy, when the light appears
When the Light Appears - meaning Summary
Life's Unpredictable Awakenings
This short, incantatory poem catalogs a range of human actions, desires, pains and performances—sex, grief, preaching, wandering—repeatedly returning to the refrain that understanding or revelation will come only "when the light appears." It presents life as a series of contradictory, bodily and social experiences that resist immediate meaning, suggesting a future moment of clarity or awakening that retroactively orders those experiences without specifying how or when it arrives.
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