Let The River Run

In 1988, Carly Simon won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for Let the River Run, sometimes titled The New Jerusalem, which was featured in the movie Working Girl. I remember hearing this song for the first time and being thrilled by its pure spiritual content and its gospel style. It is about personal rebirth--but it's also about rebirth of the nation. After eight years of Reagan, and four of Bush 1, during the height of the AIDs crisis and the avarice of Wall Street, Let the River Run evokes the spirit of individuality, the vision of poets and dreamers that was missing from the nation's soul. In the gospel style, it is a cri d'coeur of the poet's grief, as well as hope for the future. This is Carly Simon's hymn for America and joins such poems as Leaves of Grass and Wichita Vortex Sutra by Allen Ginsberg in its theme.

Let the river run,
let all the dreamers
wake the nation.
Come, the New Jerusalem.

Silver cities rise,
the morning lights
the streets that meet them,
and sirens call them on
with a song.

It's asking for the taking.
Trembling, shaking.
Oh, my heart is aching.
We're coming to the edge,
running on the water,
coming through the fog,
your sons and daughters.

We the great and small
stand on a star
and blazea trail of desire
through the dark'ning dawn.

It's asking for the taking.
Come run with me now,
the sky is the color of blue
you've never even seen
in the eyes of your lover.

Oh, my heart is aching.
We're coming to the edge,
running on the water,
coming through the fog,
your sons and daughters.

[guitar]

It's asking for the taking.
Trembling, shaking.
Oh, my heart is aching.
We're coming to the edge,
running on the water,
coming through the fog,
your sons and daughters.

Let the river run,
let all the dreamers
wake the nation.
Come, the New Jerusalem.