Where are the lions, where are the lions? Oh tell me please, have they all gone to sleep? I’m sure that I could find them if I tried. And when we meet there’ll be a great big roar. But I know that they’re all inside me, Where the lions are.
The song is about a man who feels like he’s lost his edge and wonders where the thrill of life has gone to. It also tells us how we might feel when faced with our own mortality or sense of powerlessness in an uncertain world. It asks questions such as “where have you gone?” but never really comes up with any answers – just more questions: “can’t find them anywhere”.
The meaning may be elusive, but it’s full of hope for some kind of peace between individual identities and universal oneness. Bruce Cockburn wrote these lyrics years ago, before cancer struck him down last year at age seventy-four.”Bruce Cock
