Sara, Sara,
Sweet virgin angel, sweet love of my life,
Sara, Sara,
Radiant jewel, mystical wife.
Only master lyricists like Dylan are able to engage the subject of love in these ultimate terms with any traction. They are somehow able to say things like "you fought for my soul" without it sounding like soap opera dialogue. Can I--an upaid blogger, the lowest of dilettantes--write about Dylan writing about "mystical" love, and not want to die of shame when I finish? Hmmm. Blame it on Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, I absolutely love these words:
Sleepin' in the woods by a fire in the night,
Where you fought for my soul
And went up against the odds.
I was too young to know you were doin' it right,
And you did it with strength that belonged to the gods.
Here is the speaker, admittedly Dylan, looking back on a moment, one that in hindsight he considers...is it ok if I use the word "sacred"? At any rate, he's talking about the mother of his children (as revealed in the openning lines, "I laid on a dune/I looked at the sky, when the children were babies and played on the beach."). That's about as profound a relationship as you're going to get on this short time on earth. Isn't the person you love supposed to know all of your faults and secrets and still love you anyway? And couldn't that love be characterized as a fight for one's soul? And isn't it a rare and SACRED (there, I said it) occurance when someone goes "up against the odds" for little old me?
In a brilliant move, and my favorite line of the song, Dylan drops a classic R&B phrase, "I was too young to know you were doin' it right." hualing it back down to earth, making it sexy.
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