Nonkilling 6 | Hunger

Lyrics

Nonkilling 6 [Verse: Li-Young Lee] Bodies eating bodies, heads eating heads We are nothing eating nothing And though we feast, are filled, overfilled We go famished We gang the doors of death That is, our deaths are fed That we may continue our daily dying Our bodies going down Hunger [Intro: How to Dress Well] Winter raging The color gone, hands were blue and cold A recitation, I slowly read you Tomb for Anatole: "He was eight years old A dead child is no Occasion for a song Where did I go wrong?" [Verse 1: How to Dress Well] When they say face facts, disobey that There's singing still left to be done They still can't name that, fragrant Wind rolling off a corpse Until the day that you play back the tape that you made Record your mother saying every word Pronounce the gray that The rains had brought over the sun Like a veil to suffocate the earth [Bridge: How to Dress Well] But hunger is first [Chorus: How to Dress Well] And I could feel in my body time rushing in The way nothing must have felt when something started to begin The way all of your sympathy taught me something was wrong Secret disfortune, this cold, slow momentum [Verse 2: How to Dress Well] I remember snow Saw it fall Watched a child learn, the word "nightfall" And sleep because it's sad, or not sleep at all I learned the word "forever" from Demerol I let my body go, I feed the thaw Like jumping off a cliff, but never falling A dust finer than smoke A memory in my throat A flame that pulses cold A faraway echo [Chorus: How to Dress Well] And I could feel in my body time rushing in The way nothing must have felt when something started to begin The way all of your sympathy taught me something was wrong Secret disfortune, this cold, slow momentum [Chorus: How to Dress Well] And I could feel in my body time rushing in The way nothing must have felt when something started to begin The way all of your sympathy taught me something was wrong Secret disfortune, this cold, slow momentum [Interlude] [Outro: How to Dress Well] I remember snow Saw it fall Watched a child learn, the word "nightfall" And sleep because it's sad, or not sleep at all I learned the word "forever" from Demerol I let my body go, I feed the thaw