Reference to:
Love in the Asylum
A poem by Dylan Thomas
1952, C0llected Poems
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Love in the Asylum, the poem +
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Birdmad Girl" from "The Top" includes the line “as mad as birds” referring to the girl of the title.
The term ‘polar bear’ is used in the vernacular to refer to someone with bipolar disorder. Given the topic of mental health problems in the song, this seems possible. The medical term was changed from manic depression to bipolar disorder in 1980, so the timing is right.
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Love in the Asylum
Dylan Thomas
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A stranger has come
To share my room in the house not right in the head, A girl mad as birds
Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume.
Strait in the mazed bed
She deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds
Yet she deludes with walking the nightmarish room,
At large as the dead, Or rides the imagined oceans of the male wards.
She has come possessed
Who admits the delusive light through the bouncing wall, Possessed by the skies
She sleeps in the narrow trough yet she walks the dust Yet raves at her will On the madhouse boards worn thin by my walking tears.
And taken by light in her arms at long and dear last I may without fail Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars.
by Dylan Thomas
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Bird Mad Girl
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This girl has got a smile
That can make me cry
This girl just burns with love
She's burning burning deep outside
Night time night time
Sets my house on fire
I'll turn into the melting man
I'll lose my life
To feel I feel desire
Oh I should feel
Like a polar bear
Like a polar bear
It's impossible
She flies outside this cage
Singing girl-mad words
I keep her dark thoughts deep inside
As black as stone
As mad as birds
Wild wild wild
And never turn away
Sends me all her love
She sends me everything
She sends me everywhere
Oh I could be
A polar bear
Oh I could be
A polar bear
But it's impossible
I try to talk
The sky goes red
I forget
So fill my head
With some of this
Some of that
Some of every word she said
Oh I should be
A polar bear
But it's impossible
Songwriters: Laurence Andrew Tolhurst / Robert James Smith Bird Mad Girl lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group