2 1/2 Ears

“Mercy Street” by Peter Gabriel

Mercy Street is one of those songs that gets way down inside you and never leaves. There’s pain, fear, loneliness, isolation, and desperation. There’s a child’s plea and a woman’s resignation. The ache drips out of every word. It’s one of those songs that reveals itself to me slowly and beautifully. One simple phrase can haunt my mind for years.

“She pictures a soul with no leak at the seam.”

Of course, it’s written about Anne Sexton. And every bit you learn about her, you find reflected in Peter Gabriel’s song. It’s the kind of remembrance that’s hard to come by. It’s no glossy tribute at all. It delves the perceived and expressed depths of the poet so profoundly that it connects to that very depth in each of us.

And it haunts.

“There in the midst of it, so alive and alone, words support like bone.”

There’s a necessary empathy to how we’re supposed to live. We’re supposed to be perceiving of sorrow and pain. We’re supposed to see when others are alone. But we get far too proficient at hiding it and looking away from it. We’ve conditioned ourselves to seeing what we want to see. Rather than a pervasive compassion, we travel life with bubbles around our souls. Never touching, for fear something will break.

It’s a delicate balance. And there are casualties.

There are fewer pains more silent than a little girl who feels invisible or alone. Few images stir the well of tears like that of a girl weeping, wishing for mercy from her daddy. And few monsters can ravage a young heart like a daddy who’s forgotten mercy.