Strange Bird/Sunset Studies

The golden sun is ever gentle in the valley of making
Where it's the middle of the autumn when it isn't high spring
There are men of many colours and women of all races
Wearing white, white linen
And smiles on their faces

Blue rose

There are roses round the edges of the grand property
The words "Labor, Ardor, Langdor" are its lovely trinity
And when you see just how they dress and how they speak and act too
Well all you'll want to do is dress up in their white linen too

Blue rose and drew the curtain back on the morning

And you said holly-hey, and with a teary tilt
For you were rudely made, and shoddy built
Between the thumb and the forefinger
Barefoot pressed, he hoists his trouser leg
She lifts her dress

O these men of many colors in their creamy white suits
With their different colored hands dig in the soil for their roots
Of the dreamy conversation that the slender women make
As they sip from slender glasses by the vineyard lake

Blue rose and drew the curtain back on the morning
Blue rose and every little thing was guilt and suffering no more
If you could see the people laughing and not hear the sound it makes
Then you could keep the good opinion that the tone of voice takes
If you could see the people laughing and not here the sound it makes it go

There's a woman there among them who with red, red eyes
Says you haven't been working hard enough on your lies
The golden sun is ever gentle and one lie follows another in
The only way to get there is by singing brother, singing
There are women of all races, men in white, white linen
And the only way to get there is to sing sister, sing sister, sing

And draw the curtain back on the morning
Blue rose and every little thing was guilt and suffering no more
Blue rose and drew the curtain back on the morning

Where the wars were not for wearing
The ghettoes never got
To each lonely, lonely person their own shovel, their own plot
Have you ever heard a rattle way on down when people sigh
Way on down the silly rattle says you're happy when you die

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 favorite sons, our polished metal guns,
Plagues, mermaids, setting suns

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

They married, a dandy and a back alley tough
On the foreshore while kids in the needling rough
Stayed low, in, and laid till they'd had enough
Of the somersaulting hot roll of revolting September

By thickets beneath the hot halo above
The plague bodies bathed in their talentless love
It's hot in the town with its back to the sea
O darling don't put your veil over me

From thinking a life was about them when, long
They were the thorn in its side
The hard men got plucked and by measures were gone
At pride it plucked and out, out it pried

Where's the shame in a gentle man? Stand him next to me
It's hot in the town with its back to the sea
O darling don't put your veil over me

Honey we'll go without, honey grow old and thin
I love you like I love my own skin

From thinking a life was about them but stranger
The soft women lowed and came in and were in
To swoon "O welcome hot united sailor"
Welcome from unsteady decks and from danger

Did you see a new sun in the sky?
The sun is blood and blood is a lie
It's hot in the town with its back to the sea
O darling don't put your veil over me

Honey we'll go without, honey grow old and thin
I love you like I love my own skin
O my bonny lies over the ocean
My bonny grows old and thin
I love her like I love my own skin

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, 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 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 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

Well our dogs get along, but have you noticed how easy
Evil dialogues of ours come out of wanting,
For so long, an easy laughter, to feel guilty for some

Throw us in the oven where the angels fly,
They still need to eat
She's clean, she keeps a clean house, she can cook alright,
But I no longer have meat

In the middle of the field at the height of the eclipse,
When all that we could see were the fiery whips
Of that hot-headed god, hot-headed god and wild,
Perpetually running from his wife and child

I was born in the bottom of a boat,
Of glass between the sea and me
Upward from the floor they'd float,
Bodies from the drowning dream

What do you make in the furnace of your chest?
The same as she makes in the locket of her breast.
Here's where the buds in the coal-chocked tomb go hard,
Clear and deadly and never ever bloom

There were fifty-four people in the back of a truck,
They were only sleeping
When we come to pick them up,
Safe within our keeping

Sixty-eight bullets for my wife and I,
They will never be satisfied
Strength and purpose fringed by fire,
Fire I was born in the bottom of a boat,
Of glass between the sea and me
Upward from the floor they'd float,
Bodies from the drowning dream.

O fraudulent mirror,
O rank rainbow toad,
I'd break apart too if I knowed what you knowed
I'd fall from the wall,
I'd leap from the road,
You take cover in the clover,
You don't shoulder the load

Wagner and wife, drama and strife.
Their syphilitic friend Dionysus is wise not to ask,
"Where's sunstroke house?
"Where's a crow on the far fence, where's a mill by the pond?"

Pale with horror, I saw you when your bird flew,
Now who in the whole low world has been kind to you,
Save for a kindly, ugly few?
Don't read it, don't watch it, don't do what they do.

From the wind in the winter, no mercy, no quarter. From the summer, no mercy, and little goes well.
That's where you'll live,
That's where you'll live,
Till a gale rips ya sale,
Till a will kills ya mill.

Where have you been, my heat, my shadow?
How well did you like the song?
I filled it so full of nonsense and unrule,
You feel like there's something forgotten or fell.
You feel like there's something forgotten or fell.

Pale with horror, I saw you when your bird flew
Now who in the whole low world has been kind to you save for a kindly, ugly few?
Don't read it, don't watch it, don't do what they do.
Don't read it, don't watch it, don't do what they do.

Pink-lipped bub,
Golden age sitting,
Portraits of withering roots,
Petty diversions,
Pointless excursions,
Pleasant distractions,
Underground mutes.

What do the men say
To the women when they lay down at night
All naked of arms from the old imagined fight?
And how do the women hear?
In kind and in likeness of light
"In kindness you needn't and neither do I
We are both of us capable of flight"
And as if to give proof
She jumped through the hole in the roof
What did the condemned say
To the blessed when they met on the path?
"O you take the low road and I'll take the high for a laugh
(but if I'm laughing now it's because I've a gentle heart)"
And because it was true
He slipped through the hole in the roof

La la la la,
La la la la la la...
From above your head a thing can be read that you're thinking...

What the secretaries sing and the CEO's bark in the bars

What do the dead say
To the ones who still think they're alive?
"With your heads all on backwards
You can't see in front for what near behind you lies"
"Well show us some help then
Above your head let it flicker the light
These ones that I'm with
Have not learned to forgive your necessary alibis
When they made you love money
And the poor prophet's stock
When they poisoned the watersheds
And fashioned our arrowheads
From the deep forbidden rock

O but did you see what people do?
And when you saw it you did it too
Now all your children are twice the size of you
And they come in at night through
The hole in your roof
The hole in your roof
The hole in your roof
The hole in your roof