| I was on the sidewalk
|
| And you were in a dream
|
| You said you couldn’t stand it these days
|
| Your sensitivity
|
| The city felt oppressive
|
| The heat and the noise
|
| And even at home you felt every unspoken voice
|
| I don’t know how
|
| But I tell you you’ll be fine
|
| And I set the table, and you pour the wine
|
| You always have been capable
|
| Always have been kind
|
| It isn’t really your fault
|
| Just the tenor of the times
|
| You got a job and lost it
|
| And they never told you why
|
| And you can’t seem to get past it
|
| This ordinary lie
|
| And they’re saying this summer
|
| Is the worst it’s ever been
|
| With the radio on, and they’re talking
|
| Another shooting, floods creeping in the lowlands
|
| And everybody’s shouting
|
| And I just hold your hand
|
| And I say nothing, I say nothing at all
|
| I don’t think my voice matters really after all
|
| I was raised to hear the curlews
|
| I was raised to notice light
|
| And I watch the little swallows
|
| Delicate in their flight
|
| I trail my hand down through the water
|
| Of the familiar riverside
|
| For hours in such silence I lay beside
|
| Terrified, for knowing in my time
|
| For all the parts per million
|
| For unstoppable design
|
| How can you get over knowing all you know?
|
| All the facts and the figures you learned years ago
|
| I moved back to the city
|
| I lost myself in you
|
| Or in some kind of fiction
|
| Or in some kind of truth
|
| I let myself get cynical
|
| I felt cold and bruised
|
| And the facts never changed
|
| And time only moves
|
| And somewhere above the tree line
|
| Silent just like you
|
| The river never froze in
|
| And footsteps break through
|
| And somehow in my heart
|
| Am I supposed to make do
|
| With the fragments of the stars
|
| The blue-white streetlights let through?
|
| All the birds not calling
|
| All the hot winds blow
|
| I took your picture in the sunset
|
| Smiling in the shadow
|
| You and I, we are complicit
|
| You and I were never blind
|
| Now we’re gonna live with it, our open eyes |