Lyrics

Only I never came back the gates stand open where I left the barnyard in the evening as the owl was bringing the mouse home in the gold sky at the milking hour and I turned to the amber hill and followed along the gray fallen wall by the small mossed oaks and the bushes of rusting arches bearing the ripe blackberries into the long shadow and climbed the ancient road through the last songs of the blackbirds. passing the last live farms their stones running with dark liquid and the ruined farms their windows without frames facing away looking out across the pastures of dead shepherds whom nobody ever knew grown high with the dry flowers of late summer their empty doorways gazing toward the arms of the last oaks and at night their broken chimneys watching the cold of the meteors the beams had fallen together to rest in brown herds around the fireplaces and in the shade of black trees the houses were full of their own fragrance at last mushrooms and owls and the song of the cicadas there was a note on a page made at the time and the book was closed and taken on a journey into a country where no one knew the language no one could read even the address inside the cover and there the book was of course lost it was a book full of words to remember this is how we manage without them this is how they manage without us I was not going to be long