Bruce Cockburn Hoop Dancer Lyrics

Hoop Dancer Lyrics

Tokyo jetlag evening walking Out of my throat appears this chuckle A true 20th
Century sound A little crazed and having no tonal centre 



The
echoes of this laugh fade for a long time Snaking among those jumbled
pedestrians Following that struggling Cedric taxicab Sliding over the seeming
infinity of white light and neon 



With no warning, mind's eye
winks like a lifespan And opens again on memory flash of prairie Indian Dancers
-- they're on a stage, all jigging motion And flare of bright feathers,
surrounded by white faces Floating on a sea of mind Hoop dancer struts in front
-- drum and voices blend with endless rain 



There's a time line
Something like vertical, like perpendicular Cutting through figures shuffling
on horizontal plane Cutting through the survival pride of the dancers Through
the guilty, sentimental warmth of the crowd Through to some essence common to
us, to original man To perhaps descendants numberless ... or few 



Where it intersects the space at hand This shaman with the hoops stands
Aligned like living magnetic needle between deep past and looming future
Butterfly pierced on each drum beat, wing beat, static spark, storm front,
energy circle delineated by leaping limbs 



1st man last man
dancing man man dancing Hoops in hand trampled grass circle spreading Voices
flame above crazy coyote heartbeat drum 



I see sunrise on the
plains big river at dusk Perpetual pillar of dust on prairie rim and always
overhead those wings -- circling, turning 



He's the earth he's the
egg he's the eagle always circling Always turning -- always comes back to the
centre 



Hoops whirling, now transparent feet touch down on
anaconda Streets and on the next leap dissolve slowly into the moving lights




Rainbow steps, jerking universe Goodbye, man-in-time And just
beyond the clatter and