The Lilac and the Apple
This song is one of the things that I've been wanting to post. A folk singing couple I used to know at SUUSI has it on two of their albums. I haven't listened to them in awhile, but I did a few days ago, and this song has been on my mind. I didn't realize it was by Kate Wolf until I googled it just now.
There are a number of places in this area where there are traces of homes standing in the woods. Not a lilac bush and an apple tree, but a dense patch of pachysandra ... a huge stone fireplace ... the remains of an old car and an icebox, both rusted through ... a concrete corner and sill ... the ends of a battered sign that has been engulfed by the once-young tree it was nailed to ... hunks of tiled wall and floor from a bathroom built the days of lath and plaster ... a cellar, still open and deep ... all deep in the second-growth forests that have been reestablished on what was once all farmland and mill towns.
I always wonder who lived there? How long ago? What was it like? How did they feel about leaving? How did these things come to be left when everything else was carried away? I gaze at the traces and try to imagine, but I'll never know.
The Lilac and the Apple
A lilac bush and an apple tree
Were standing in the woods,
Out on the hill above the town,
Where once a farmhouse stood.
In the winter the leaves are bare
And no one sees the signs
Of a house that stood and a garden that grew
And life in another time.
One spring when the buds came bursting forth
And grass grew on the land,
The lilac spoke to the apple tree
As only a old friend can.
Do you think, said the lilac, this might be the year
When someone will build here once more?
Here by the cellar, still open and deep,
There's room for new walls and a floor.
Oh, no, said the apple, there are so few
Who come here on the mountain this way,
And when they do, they don't often see
Why we're growing here, so far away.
A long time ago we were planted by hands
That worked in the mines and the mills,
When the country was young and the people who came
Built their homes in the hills.
But now there are cities, the roads have come,
And no one lives here today.
And the only signs of the farms in the hills
Are the things not carried away.
Broken dishes, piles of boards,
A tin plate, an old leather shoe.
And an apple tree still bending down,
And a lilac where a garden once grew.
There are a number of places in this area where there are traces of homes standing in the woods. Not a lilac bush and an apple tree, but a dense patch of pachysandra ... a huge stone fireplace ... the remains of an old car and an icebox, both rusted through ... a concrete corner and sill ... the ends of a battered sign that has been engulfed by the once-young tree it was nailed to ... hunks of tiled wall and floor from a bathroom built the days of lath and plaster ... a cellar, still open and deep ... all deep in the second-growth forests that have been reestablished on what was once all farmland and mill towns.
I always wonder who lived there? How long ago? What was it like? How did they feel about leaving? How did these things come to be left when everything else was carried away? I gaze at the traces and try to imagine, but I'll never know.
The Lilac and the Apple
A lilac bush and an apple tree
Were standing in the woods,
Out on the hill above the town,
Where once a farmhouse stood.
In the winter the leaves are bare
And no one sees the signs
Of a house that stood and a garden that grew
And life in another time.
One spring when the buds came bursting forth
And grass grew on the land,
The lilac spoke to the apple tree
As only a old friend can.
Do you think, said the lilac, this might be the year
When someone will build here once more?
Here by the cellar, still open and deep,
There's room for new walls and a floor.
Oh, no, said the apple, there are so few
Who come here on the mountain this way,
And when they do, they don't often see
Why we're growing here, so far away.
A long time ago we were planted by hands
That worked in the mines and the mills,
When the country was young and the people who came
Built their homes in the hills.
But now there are cities, the roads have come,
And no one lives here today.
And the only signs of the farms in the hills
Are the things not carried away.
Broken dishes, piles of boards,
A tin plate, an old leather shoe.
And an apple tree still bending down,
And a lilac where a garden once grew.