May be a construction worker working on a home
Might be living in a mansion, you might live in a dome
You may own guns and you may even own tanks
You may be somebody’s landlord, you may even own banks
This starts by coming a long way down the social ladder from that ambassador (slumming?), with the two successive work-words here establishing the daily grind: “May be a construction worker working on a home”. “Worker working”: that is what it feels like (work, work, work), with the redundancy not being of the luxurious kind, simply repetitive and a bit blank. But up the scale again, at once, into that “mansion” and into “you might live in a dome”. Living in a dome is a combination of the grand and the offhand. The usual thought is that it is very nice to have a dome over one’s head again.
Perhaps this verse seems for a moment tamed, compared with its predecessors, but not for long, for it swings into a different kind of action as it makes a place for the word that until now has exerted its energies only within the refrain, the word “somebody”. The power here is felt in the momentum from the verse into the refrain:
You may own guns and you may even own tanks
You may be somebody’s landlord, you may even own banks
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes you are
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Every somebody is a nobody in the eyes of the Lord, or of the devil, come to that.
You may be a preacher, Mr Dylan, and it may be necessary to take this bull, whether papal or not, by the horns.
You may be a preacher preaching spiritual pride
May be a city councilman taking bribes on the side
May be working in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair
You may be somebody’s mistress, may be somebody’s heir
As printed in Lyrics 1962–1985, it was “You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride”, but what Dylan sings, “a preacher preaching”, is much more telling, as adopting – and adapting – “a construction worker working”, and as suggesting that the preacher not only has spiritual pride but preaches it. He may think that he is preaching against pride, but this is not what actually happens as soon as he opens his ripe and fruity mouth.
And then there is scattered another flurry of darts. Preacher is in touch with councilman, because of what council is. Taking bribes is in touch with cut, because of what it is to take a cut (my usual percentage, I trust?). Taking bribes on the side is in touch with somebody’s mistress, because of what The Oxford English Dictionary knows carnally about on the side: “surreptitiously, without acknowledgement. (Freq. with connotation of dishonesty: illicitly; outside wedlock.)”. “What would some of you say if I told you that I, as a married man, have had three women on the side?” (1968). In the momentum from this verse into the refrain (a mounting momentum now), there is twice a “somebody” before hitting the refrain:
You may be somebody’s mistress, may be somebody’s heir
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
The verse that follows is both the seed of the song and – because of the Sermon on the Mount – its flower.
And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
“Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk”: Dylan sings this quatrain most elegantly, with an equable commitment to its being so pat, rhythmically and vocally and syntactically, so symmetrical. The bed may be king-sized but it is a perfect fit. The danger of the fit and of the pat could not be better intimated (complacency completely self-satisfied), intimated delicately to the point of daintiness, but without palliation. For the “But” is biding its time.
Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk
Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk
Might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread
May be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody . . .
And so the song moves to its moving on. The turn that finally releases it from its perpetual motion is its decision to switch from what you may be, and what they may call you, to what you may call me – and thence to what little difference this could ever make, given the inescapable truth of our all having to serve somebody. Earlier the song had dangled titles and entitlements: “They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief ”. They may call you these things servilely, but don’t forget that you, too, are gonna have to serve somebody. “They may call you . . .” now returns, from the opposite direction, as “You may call me . . .”
You may call me Terry, you may call me Timmy
You may call me Bobby, or you may call me Zimmy
You may call me R. J., you may call me Ray
You may call me anything, no matter what you say
You’re still gonna have to serve somebody, yes
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
On every previous occasion, not only the last line of the refrain but its first line had crystallized in an opening obdurate “But”. Dylan has always respected the patient power of life’s most important little insister, “But”, which will not be cheated or defeated. To bring the song to an end, while urging us not to forget the unending truth of its asseveration, there is this time no opening “But”, only the conclusive one.119
You’re gonna have to serve somebody. You may not like the thought, but there are forms of the thought that ought to do more than reconcile you to it. At Morning Prayer, the Second Collect, for Peace:
O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom; Defend us thy humble servants in all assaults of our enemies.
Thy humble servants, thou whose service is perfect freedom. It is perfectly paradoxical, like so much else.
Meanwhile, the crasser forms of covetousness keep up their assaults. The artist seeks to defend us against them.
You can’t take it with you and you know that it’s too worthless to be sold
They tell you, “Time is money” as if your life was worth its weight in gold
(When You Gonna Wake Up?)
It is one of the most enduring of proverbial reminders, You can’t take it with you. In the different accents of St Paul:
For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be