Sunset Studies

You are the queen of a dust bowl,
Ex to a crier in a town of ashes,
This is what happens when a great love crashes.
Tonight you let me see you,
For the first time, in a long time,
For the first time, in a time
Without the fear of going blind,
without the fear of going blind...
In a den of quitters in a hall of hosts,
Between worn out waltzes and wedding toasts
I heard a man confess that what he struggles with most
is the freedom for so long.
Without a strong enough voice to tell him what's wrong,
Without a will, without a prayer, without a passionate song to sing...
Our favourite sons, our polished metal guns,
Plagues, mermaids, setting suns
Our favourite sons, our polished metal guns,
Plagues, mermaids, setting suns

Well all by and by and all through and through,
this is the only thing that comes back to you,
how you banged her on a cannon in a World War Two park in Gundagai,
O come on guy, O come on, you were born red-eyed and screaming,
You mother was beaming, she trembled,
and dabbed your eyes with mercury and rained on you the blessings three.
You were a babe of Spring now what's it going to be.
Sunshine

Our favourite songs, our polished metal guns.
Plagues, mermaids, setting suns
Our favourite sons, our polished metal guns,
Plagues, mermaids, setting suns

Upon all brave new breeds of old disease
on rotten roots of family trees,
on sold out universities,
Other sunset studies and these.

Level your fretting. I won't be forgetting the flush of your face
When I lifted you level to me and a wattle tree framed your body.
In whispers welling with the dope of a new Spring
You said "Kill me a dynasty or our love won't mean a thing..."
A bullet for a diamond ring.
A favour promised
A promise delivered and more to you -
It's only a war I'll be back to your shore before you know it I'm gone,
Then I'll cover you body.

And if you have to go please go lightly,
Keep it to a foxtrot whether he's a fox or not.
Keep it cold, keep all your heat for me -
I'll be needing it for when I'm cold you see?
Let your children remind you of me
Whether by another or by the ghost in me in you -
There goes my baby.
I would think of you and a palmtree would cover your body.

You - in love and war we are bound by a law,
it goes to you and then to yours to recover my body.

She bound me up and hugged me
'O how the mother loves thee'
She covered my body
In a ragged flag and bloody -
O not on your life.

The children of this cold coast
Are throwing themselves off cliffs,
We know that they don't want to
But memory insists -
Memories of water,
Fantasies of fins,
So be off baby seal.
Swim little fish...
Under mackerel sun, you're unnatural
O how, how do they breathe?
And whales hear whales
When love comes down there,
But also from miles
Hear pain and there fear.
Pinned by the water pins,
Stuck by the ships,
Mild the bay seems,
Mild in the mist...
Under mackerel sun, you're unnatural.
O how, how do they breathe?
On days when the bay breaks,
And gales gut the shore,
They come up from the water's edge,
And they appear young no more -
White haired, widowed, and what they would have been.
Children at eternal play.
Angels of the bowling green.

Are you lit from the inside, is that why your teeth are bright?
You smile as the sun sets on the window, and the car fills up with light,
Make a smile tulip, don't think of me as something that's passed,
I am not written in the book, but I intend to last...
And as the sun comes up you know it's really going down,
You only framed it incorrectly, now you cannot turn it round,
If there's enough of us here left, then we'll drive it into town,
And when we pass the field of tulips, then I'll put the knuckle down...
Don't frown tulip,
Make a smile,
Don't frown tulip,
You know it's all worthwhile...

There were lions by the roadside, I was driving with my Father,
Through a dream of French forests, and all was warmth and solace,
And all said He is with us, but always sad and serious,
Standing outside in the garden, pained and peerless...

Don't frown tulip
Make a smile
Don't frown tulip
You know it's all worthwhile...
Make a smile at the end of your tether,
This was never gonna last forever...

The woods all were peopled with daughters and sons,
The teeming uncounted and unchosen ones,
Who don't dance anymore, they just move around in bubbles,
And nobody notices nobody's troubles,
Nobody notices nobody's troubles...

Don't frown tulip
Make a smile,
Don't frown tulip,
You know it's all worthwhile...
Make a smile at the end of your tether,
This was never gonna last forever,
Don't frown tulip, don't frown tulip...

This is a song, not like the other ones,
secret and selfish and somewhat hollow.
In the middle of this song there seemed to grown another
Of indeterminate length and origin.
To populate a people's song, first you must do something wrong,
If you've never been infirm you can never be strong.
Prune your rose bushes, Djamila, (Glenn)
Or you'll never see your home again.

Country and city, kingdom of the well, of the unwell,
You dwell in them both like a ghost -
When old King George said to my long dead kin
"Ten summers and winters in Arthur will do you in"
He cut out his heart and he buried the sin there in England.

Prune your rose bushes Luis, (Glenn)
Oh they'll grow up again,
There may still be a next year, who knows?
If you're lonely take a drink, there are better things to think,
Think on ancient cities, sunsets and girls in Spring.

You needed a song, I needed one too,
So keep listening
FOR MY OFFER TO YOU
Take it with good grace and humour too

First came the golden age
When there was no need of proof,
When lions ate flowers and your house
Didn't need a roof.
Then came the silver days
When a boy saw himself for the first time
In the reflection of a blade
Then he saw the way
To populate a people's song.
First he must do something wrong.
If you've never heard the music you never will

Prune your rose bushes Billy and Toby. (Glenn)
So they'll soon grow up again,
There may still be a next year, who knows?
If you're lonely, take a drink,
There are better things to think
Think on ancient cities, sunsets and girls in Spring.
Because all the tears that you mend,
They will open up again.
And weren't you suppose to call your friends this evening?

It rained all night the day I left.
The weather it was fine,
It rained all night the day I left

Here comes the night.
Roll on you careless evening,
When we unite
Not a force concurs,
Not hell nor heaven,
So let it come, let it rain,
Let it burn though you and me again
In the slums without name,
and it isn't only poverty to blame.
Here comes your man.
Rolling down the street the callous field,
He puts it in your hand
And all the world is but a whilst and a milkshake.

O how can you breathe little blue?
You have hooks, you have holes in you,
In absentium and in lieu of all the things that have been promised you...

But o my sweet how incomplete you are,
in your eyes a smile so sweet
A silly soldiers scar
Splits you face from ear to ear,
You pretend that you simply cannot hear
The bells and the bombs going off in the galleria.

Here comes the night.
Roll on you careless evening,
When we unite
Not a force concurs,
Not hell nor heaven,
Let it come, let it rain
Let it burn through you and me again
In the alums without name,
And it isn't only poverty to blame -

My sweet how incomplete we are,
In their eyes am I from dust
You from my bones imparted.
And if that don't make you laugh at nature's rough replacement.

Too late in all : Here comes the night
Here comes the night
Here comes the night
Here comes the night
Roll on you night. the night good night. roll on.

Scoop my brains and let my heart have action
In its thousand million lots,
In the dumb city dawn I am senseless and drawn to the sun
as the blackbirds and the toppyknots.
And in biting down on the great foam world
What is the looming thing?
Not money, not flesh, not happiness,
But this, which makes me sing.
O scoop my brains and let my heart have action
In its thousand million lots,
And feel the subterranean movement a fraction
and deep under ocean, the celibate rocks.
Has it borne me down?
Has it run me through?
If I give it a name do I contract it too?
More likely this thing has been growing in me,
Like I have grown in you.

Scoop my brains and let my heart have action
In its thousand million lots,
In the dumb city dawn we dispense with the forlorn beasts
that we were in the night, grown lean on love.
A love which will pierce and callous and tumesce,
O upon the birth oath the morbid bloom
Is a child's sense of impending doom
in a womb that is ambushed,
in a womb that is ambushed.
In biting down on the great foam world,
What is the looming thing?
Not money, not flesh, not happiness,
But this, which makes me sing.
Not money, not flesh, not happiness,
But this, which makes me sing.

There is no such place, o yes I have seen it too
Just a little different from how you do,
A river winding blue among the dunes and a marble bed
A sun that doesn't set but settles.
There is no such place.
If I lower mine to yours would you kiss me on the face?
If you're looking for an unmarked place,
There is no such place -
Blasted in appearance and a composite of fearful minutes
Frozen in the waking instant

Longing, things I long for,
Peaceful nights, strangers at the door,
O come in, come in,
You've been here before.

There is no such place, so perhaps we have a reason
For our long and falling face,
Above all it would be warm but we would keep our heads all
Clear as Winter, storms would be a sight to make us shiver
But without the chill
Of thinking all is hither-thither -

Longing, Things I long for,
Peaceful nights, strangers at the door,
O come in, come through the door,
You've been here before,
You've been here before

There is no such place, o yes I have seen it too
Just a little different from how you do,
A house upon a hill with no windows
Just a can upon the sill
To catch your tears
To feed your garden.