Waves of violet go crashing and laughing
Rainbow-winged singing birds fly ’round the sun
Sunbells rain down in a liquid profusion
Mermaids on porpoises draw up the dawn
What’s become of the baby1
This cold December morning?
Songbirds
frozen in their flight
drifting to the earth
remnants of forgotten dreaming
Calling . . .
answer comes there none
Go to sleep, you child
Dream of never-ending always
Panes of crystal
Eyes sparkle like waterfalls
lighting the polished ice caverns of Khan2
But where in the looking-glass fields of illusion3
wandered the child who was perfect as dawn?
What’s become of the baby
this cold December morning?
Racing
rhythms of the sun
all the world revolves
captured in the eye of Odin4
Allah5
Pray, where are you now?
All Mohammed’s men
blinded by the sparkling water
Sheherazade gathering stories to tell6
from primal gold fantasy petals that fall
But where is the child7
who played with the sun chimes
and chased the cloud sheep
to the regions of rhyme?
Stranded
cries the south wind
Lost in the regions of lead
Shackled by chains of illusion
Delusions of living and dead
Words by Robert Hunter
Music by Jerry Garcia
Compare Sharp, #228: “What’ll We Do with the Baby?”:
What’ll we do with the baby?
What’ll we do with the baby?
What’ll we do with the baby?
Oh, we’ll wrap it up in calico
Oh, we’ll wrap it up in calico
And send it to its pappy, O.
Also compare the line in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, in which the Cheshire cat asks Alice, “What became of the baby?” She replies that the baby turned into a pig and ran away. For the full conversation, see the note on the Cheshire cat in “Can’t Come Down.”
A reference to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan: A Vision in a Dream (1816):
Xanadu: a kingdom on the coast of Asia where Kubla Khan ordered a stately pleasure dome to be constructed, described as “a miracle of rare device.” The caves of ice beneath the sunny dome are particularly enchanting. . . . It was in the nearby, ancient forests, in a savage, holy, and enchanted places where women can be heard wailing for their demon lovers, that a mighty fountain of water, flung up violently from a deep chasm, was revealed to be the source of the sacred river Alph. (Dictionary of Imaginary Places)
Coleridge received the vision of Xanadu, he said, while in an opium-induced trance. He awoke from the trance having been given the poem, which he wrote down, but he was interrupted and was only able to commit a small portion of the poem to the page. The introduction that Coleridge wrote for the publication of “Kubla Khan” included part of another poem, which is mentioned in the annotation to “Ripple.”
The poem:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ‘twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Kubla Khan (usually Kublai Khan) (1216–94): Grandson of Ghengis Khan, ruled from Beijing, which he founded. Marco Polo visited his court.
The mirror makes two appearances in the Aoxomoxoa song cycle, showing itself in “Rosemary” as well, though if you count the “Leonardo words” from “China Cat Sunflower,” there are three mirrors. (And the palindromic album title itself may be taken as a mirror.) The evocations are many: among them, Alice Through the Looking-Glass; the album cover’s own palindromic nature; and the film Orphée (1949) by Jean Cocteau. In Cocteau’s vision, Orpheus, who is a candidate for the identity of the “baby,” disappears into a looking-glass world.
According to Bulfinch’s Mythology:
Odin. The Scandinavian name of the god called by the Anglo-Saxons Woden; the god of wisdom, poetry, war, and agriculture. He became the All-wise by drinking from Mimir’s fountain at the cost of one eye. His remaining eye is the Sun. [!] . . . His two black ravens are Hugin (thought) and Munin (memory).
Mimir seems worth a look as well:
Mimir. In Norse mythology, a giant water demon. He dwells at “Mimir’s Well,” the source of all wisdom.
“The word presented in Islam as the proper name of God.” (Encyclopedia of Religion) Appears to be etymologically derived from the ancient Semitic root el, meaning God. Used in this song, it seems to refer back to the Khan character, who is of nonspecific Asiatic derivation. The other reference to Allah in the Grateful Dead universe is the “Blues for Allah” lyric by Hunter.
The storyteller of The Arabian Nights. According to Benét’s Reader’s Encyclopedia:
The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments: A collection of ancient Persian-Indian-Arabian tales, orginally in Arabic, arranged in its present form about 1450, probably in Cairo. . . . Although the stories are discrete in plot, they are unified by Scheherazade, the supposed teller; she postpones her execution by telling her husband, Schahriah, a story night after night, without revealing the climax until the following session. 32
Hunter also refers to The Arabian Nights in “Blues for Allah,” with the line “The thousand stories have come ’round to one again.”
Could it be that the baby who is lost is the same child who was wrapped in scarlet covers in “Saint Stephen”? If so, then this child could be Orpheus, the child of Calliope and Apollo. The tale of Orpheus appears a few times in the course of Hunter’s career, most notably in “Reuben and Cerise.”
Studio recording: Aoxomoxoa (June 20, 1969). Due to an experiment in recording technology, this song is practically unlistenable, yet it has always been intriguing to those who follow the Dead’s lyrics.
Only performance known: April 26, 1969, at the Electric Theater in Chicago.
