Pieces for Other Lives

Lyrics

I Encouragement meant nothing Inside it The miner would continue to Crawl out of their dark bodies Extending the darkness making It hollow And how could they be rightly paid Darkness gathered on the money It lived in the dies the miners pursued it what Was their reward Some might bring flowers saying Nothing can last Some anyway Held out their whole lives in their glass hands Sweeter than men till past the time Some with a pure light burned but over Their heads even theirs Soot wrote on the ceiling An unknown word Shutting your eyes from the spectacle you Saw not darkness but Nothing On which the doors were opening II All that time with nothing to do In that granite shed The clinic by the rainy sea While the doctor snake turned himself on at doors In other rooms to study Your life a small animal dying in a bottle Out of what could be stolen and hidden you contrived This model of the blood A map in lost tubing and dead joints and you Pointed out its comical story It beings here it swells it goes along It comes to the man sitting talking to a stick Which he thinks is his dog or his wife It comes to the river unwinding the stones It takes up a thread it comes to the tailor saying Thank you to his needle Over and over here is the needle It passes through his One seam it comes to the door which is not shown But which anyway is standing open And beyond it there is Salt water in unknown quantities III At one stroke out of the ruin All the watches went out and The eyes disappeared like martins into their nests I woke to the slamming of doors and got up naked The old wind vanished and vanished but was still there Everyone but the cold was gone for good And the carol of the miners had just ended