“Oh, who among them do they think could bury you?”
“Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes”: the phrase “no man” comes more than once in the Book of Ezekiel, and there is a gate nearby. Ezekiel 44:2: “This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it.” (Similarly, 14:15: “that no man may pass through”.) “No man” is heard again and again in the Bible. Isaiah 24:10: “Every house is shut up, that no man may come in. There is a crying for wine in the streets; all joy is darkened, the mirth of the land is gone. In the city is left desolation, and the gate is smitten with destruction.” Isaiah is another of the prophets who toll the words “no man”. As printed in Lyrics 1962–1985, the refrain is always “the sad-eyed prophet says”; in singing, Dylan moves from this to “the sad-eyed prophets say”.
“The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me,” William Blake recorded, straightforwardly, “and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition” (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell).
“Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus” (Ezekiel 28:12). In chapter 26 of Ezekiel, the pride of Tyrus is brought low, for Tyrus will be set “in the low parts of the earth” (26:20), the low lands. A king of kings “shall enter into thy gates” (26:10). And the city’s music will have a dying fall. “I will cause the noise of thy songs to cease; and the sound of thy harps shall be no more heard” (26:13).
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands
Where the sad-eyed prophets say that no man comes
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums
Should I leave them by your gate
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?
– and then, scarcely waiting:
The kings of Tyrus with their convict list
Are waiting in line for their geranium kiss
Should I wait? At which point we wait only a moment to hear (two lines later) that they are waiting in line, “The kings of Tyrus with their convict list” – Tyrus, the city of Tyre, having been found guilty by the judgement of the Lord (convict: proved or pronounced guilty, as in “convict to eternal damnation”).131
Guilty of what? Of being not only covetous but the cause of covetousness in others, of gratifying the covetous and of profiting from their covetousness. “With your pockets well protected at last”: glad to hear it, but their pockets are in need of protection.
Guilty of what would now be called conspicuous consumption or consumerism, a fast-fed greed that supposes that it can float free of the terrible ancient verb “consume”, a verb that utters its fierce condemnation throughout Ezekiel.
Guilty of such a commodification as exults in its wealth of modifications. Tyrus is “a merchant of the people for many isles” (27:3). This one chapter includes among Tyrus’s world trade splendours its shipboards of fir trees of Senir; cedars of Lebanon to make masts; oaks of Bashan for oars; ivory from Chittim for benches; and fine linen from Egypt for sails. (Where are the Arabian drums?) It deals in silver, iron, tin, lead, and brass; ivory and ebony; emeralds, and fine linen, and coral, and agate; honey, and oil, and balm; wine and wool; iron, cassia, and calamus; precious clothes; lambs, and rams, and goats; all spices, and all precious stones, and gold; blue clothes, and broidered work, and chests of rich apparel. (Rich apparel, precious clothes, blue clothes, a cut above our modern world and “your basement clothes”.) The recurrent tribute in this chapter of Ezekiel, a tribute full of peril, is “. . . were thy merchants”. All this, with a sense that we haven’t even started yet. With your, and with your, and with your.
These chapters of Ezekiel, with an unmisgiving redundancy that apes the extravagance that it sets down, marvel repeatedly at the city’s “merchandise” and its “merchants”. Tyrus is “thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kind of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs” (27:12). But wait, there is a force that can outwait the kings of Tyrus: the Lord, he who speaks, through his prophet Ezekiel, of the doom to come: “And they shall make a spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of thy merchandise” (26:12). The prophet speaks unto the prince of Tyrus, a warning delivered (should I leave it by your gate?) against covetousness and this sin’s compact with its fellow-sin, pride:
with thy wisdom and with thine understanding hast thou gotten thee riches, and hast gotten gold and silver into thy treasures: by thy great wisdom and by thy traffick hast thou increased thy riches, and thine heart is lifted up because of thy riches: therefore thus saith the Lord God; Because thou hast set thine heart as the heart of God; behold, therefore will I bring strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations. (28:4–7)
With thy wisdom and with thine understanding were these riches gained, whereupon wisdom and understanding forgot the Lord God, and so precipitated their own folly and destruction.
What is Tyrus but one huge warehouse of hubris? Its wares are of every kind. Tyrus is “thy merchant by reason of the multitude of the wares of thy making” (27:16), a lavish phrase that is repeated two verses later, as though itself a gesture of conspicuously luxurious consumption. Thy wares, and the multitude of the wares of thy making: where better to see them all than by looking deep in my eyes, “My warehouse eyes”? Warehouse eyes, taking a turn for the worse, can become whorehouse eyes. “Thou hast opened thy feet to every one that passed by, and multiplied thy whoredoms” (Ezekiel 16:25).
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums
Should I leave them by your gate
I can see how someone can leave his drums by your gate, and I can sense the pulse that throbs from “eyes” to “drums” via the disconcertingly different drums that are eardrums.132 But his eyes? Forget about should he leave them by your gate, how could he? The surrealistic glimpse is of body-parts and parcels.
If we try to understand the way in which the phrase “my warehouse eyes” may be not only a riddle but a mystery, we are likely to ask ourselves in what circumstances of language a noun (rather than an adjective) may be found preceding the noun that is “eyes”. Say, a noun with a sense, perhaps, of an occupied space, something that pertains to a house?
Ah, I guess I know with what eyes he gazes upon the sad-eyed lady, even as her eyes look alive with what Ezekiel calls “the desire of thine eyes”: his bedroom eyes. See The Oxford English Dictionary, 3b, from W. H. Auden (1947), “Making bedroom eyes at a beef steak”, flanked by “Italians are bedroom-eyed gigolos” (1959), and by “George’s wife had bedroom eyes” (1967).
The song engages with what it is to be queasily grateful for yet more gifts than wise men bring – or have brought to them. If there is one invitation even more covetable than the glad eye, it is what the lady gives him: the sad eye. As for him:
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums
Should I leave them by your gate
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?
You think he’s just an errand boy to satisfy your wandering desires.
Greed
The Natural History of Iceland (1758) is known as an icon
