As so with that, I thought I'd take a final walk

The tide of public opinion had started to abate

The neighbours, 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