As so with that, I thought I'd take a final walk The tide of public opinion had started to abate The neighbors, bless them, had turned out to be all talk I could see their frightened faces Peering at me through the gate
I was looking for an end to this, for some kind of closure Time moved so rapidly, I had no hope of keeping track of it I thought of my friends who had died of exposure And I remembered other ones who had died from the lack of it
And in my best shoes I started falling forward down the street I stopped at a church and jostled through the crowd And love followed just behind me, panting at my feet As the steeple tore the stomach from a lonely little cloud
Inside I sat, seeking the presence of a God I searched through the pictures in a leather-bound book I found a woolly lamb dozing in an issue of blood And a gilled Jesus shivering on a fisherman's hook
Babe It seems so long Since you've been gone away And I Just got to say That it grows darker with the day
Back on the street I saw a great big smiling sun It was a Good day and an Evil day and all was bright and new And it seemed to me that most destruction was being done By those who could not choose between the two
Amateurs, dilettantes, hacks, cowboys, clones The streets groan with little Caesars, Napoleons and cunts With their building blocks and their tiny plastic phones Counting on their fingers, with crumbs down their fronts
I passed by your garden, saw you with your flowers The Magnolias, Camellias and Azaleas so sweet And I stood there invisible in the panicking crowds You looked so beautiful in the rising heat I smell smoke, see little fires bursting on the lawns People carry on regardless, listening to their hands Great cracks appear in the pavement, the earth yawns Bored and disgusted, to do us down
Babe It seems so long Since you've been gone And I Just got to say That it grows darker with the day
These streets are frozen now. I come and go Full of a longing for something I do not know My father sits slumped in the deepening snow As I search, in and out, above, about, below
Babe It seems so long Since you went away And I Just got to say That it grows darker with the day