I posted this some time ago...
Opeth The Funeral Portrait Blackwater Park
Demoke
You wait by the window
Mornings breath on the sill
Idle hands given another try
So you wait and you savour the moment
Outside the canvas turned white
Ruby eyes in the fog
A catchy and haunting acoustic guitar riff introduces us to this song. Thirty seconds, and the other instruments are added while the soft guitar of the beginning goes on. We are around the first minute mark and the first stanza starts off.
Right in the first line you wait by the window we are introduced to two characters: a speaker and a literal you. We are in the morning and it must be cold outside for we can see water drops (nice metaphor here mornings breath) on the window sill. The foggy weather is another reference to the fact that it is cold. However, there is a contrast here for it is not uncomfortable. Hands that cannot be used (idle) are touched so the person waits and enjoys with pleasure this caress. While this person being touched is inside home, the canvas is white! Canvas is what artists use for painting, and this word is directly connected with the title portrait. The fact that the hands are idle can also imply here that the person is dead but now is found under a living state. This person must leave home. It is his/her own funeral. Ruby eyes, meaning the dark red colour of those eyes are in the fog, outside. Nice synecdoche to represent an out-of-this world character for I have never met any human being with such eyes colour.
Rain washing clean all the sins
A liquid gown that covers all
Your loathe turns endless
Opened mirage soothes your sense
Locked on the pinnacle
The best secret within
It is raining: third reference to this cold, foggy and now rainy weather. If it cleans all the sins, then water here is opposed to infernal fire: salvation or damnation. Your loathe turns endless shows that this you is really reluctant to leave, which is probably making somebody lose his/her nerves. Opened mirage: this unreal feeling of touch (a mirage happens in the dessert, when it is too warm and you see illusions which are not really there) eases the persons feelings. Let us remember s/he is just dead. It is his/her funeral outside. The pinnacle, the dead does not want to leave at all since the enjoyment is so great
The touching of the hands from before gives me the sense s/he is with his/her lover
It could be just Gods protection as well.
Like a derelict child
Heart burning for a stranger
Ascending to the meek
Flock round the liars in awe
This stanza refers to the ruby eyes character. He is like homeless or deprived of all property, with heart burning, really wanting to get this person to hell with him even though s/he is a stranger to him. There is a clear contrast between good and evil, heaven and hell, but the good, the saved ones, are referred here with a bad connotation: the word meek is used to talk about someone gentle and quiet ready to do what others want without expressing his/her own opinion. It is as if this person is being saved, the touch can be from God, but the imperative from the devil is coming to mean something like stay here in the suffering!
Caked in the soil beneath
Fear me when we meet
Turn away in admiration
My firm grip round the nucleus of joy
The first line here is a reference to the burial. The dead body is interred. Caked means being covered by something soft which with the spell of time will become hard substance. The actual fight is taking place in the afterlife. Again this devil goes on using imperatives and commands: fear me, turn away, and an implied admire me
I have got power, so much, because the whole idea of hell is enjoying, doing the forbidden things, which are the ones giving most pleasure.
Enough of this
You will leave me now
You will see it now
Perish at my hands
Finally, the demon has lost his nerves completely; he is fed up with waiting and is determined to take definite action. At this point, a climax in this song, we find the guitar solo.
Close to you
Tangled up in hair
Fresh stigma looks
Shall I take you with me
And it is cold
Ruby eyes in the fog
It is me
This being has taken this guy with him. Now he is a possession of the devil. We are no longer inside and under the protection of a home. It is cold, reminds us the text, ruby eyes in the fog. The dead person will descend to hell.
And you are just like them all
Stained by the names of fathers
Im greeting my downward fall
Leaving the throes to others
The person here welcomes his death and final fall to hell and waves life goodbye. The throes are violent pains at the time of dying
he is now rid of them. I like the way Mikael played here with the two words: throes and others, with the same letters, two words, a perfect way to say goodbye.