Who\'s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses (album version)

[rivergoat]

This part didn't make much sense when I listened to it, but when I added a hyphen it turned out better.

Under the trees the river laughing at you and me
Hallelujah, heavens-wide rose the doors you open <----
I just can't close

A more grammatically correct way of putting it would be: "The doors you open rose up heavens-wide." (really huge, for which "I just can't close" fits).

kind of a stretch maybe, but it's the best thing I can come up with.

}:)~

edit: typo!

[Carl]

That part had always bugged me as well.  I think it does make sense, I picture rows as a hallway or boulevard... the singer has been allowed into a new territory (of feeling) and doesn't want to come back even though the antagonist is longer there.  It makes more sense to me than door s suddenly growing to miracle heights once opened... it isn't that the doors can't actually be closed, just that emotionally he can't bring himself to do it.

Hence the extremely ambivalent, "don't turn around..." bit afterwards, the singer is stuck and is torn between feeling angry the antagonist left and needing them to fill the void their absence causes.

Moving to interpretation as it the exact same sound and we're arguing on the basis of meaning.

[moniiq]

mmm, i think 'the doors you open I just can't close' just means that she gives him insights he has to take serious, that he just can't dismiss.  with a reference to huxleys 'the doors of perception'. which i think most of you will know is also the book that named  'the doors'.

[Carl]

The doors are meant metaphorically, but I do think it is an emotional thing as well as intellectual.

Oh, the deeper I spin
Oh, the hunter will sin for your ivory skin

This is just pure desire. :p

Took a drive in the dirty rain
To a place where the wind calls your name
Under the trees the river laughing at you and me

It's dirty rain, something emotionally bad.  He hears her name whispered in the wind once he gets away from everything, feels like nature itself is laughing at how they turned out.

Hallelujah, heavens wide rows
The doors you open
I just can't close

I agree you gain a lot in perception, and that is part of it, but I think is more doors of love/bliss/pleasure etc that he can't close.  Right after this is the whole don't turn around bit, but even as he wants her to just go and not turn back, he is yearning for it.  The way the last "come on now love, don't you look back" is nearly screamed out?  Plus some live shows, like the first night, where he goes on this extended bridge thing about sweetest love, hold on, etc.