From the top of the flight

Of the wide white stairs

Through the rest of my life

Do you wait for me there?


There's a bell in my ears

There's a wide white row

Drop a bell down the stairs

Hear it fall forever more

Hear it fall forever more


Drop a bell off of the dock

Blot it out in the sea

Drowning mute as a rock

Sounding mutiny


There's a light in the wings

Hits this system of strings

From the side while they swing;

See the wires, the wires, the wires


And the articulation

In our elbows and knees

[makes them jerk in the breeze]

Makes us buckle and we couple in endless increase 

As the audience admires milkymoon


And the little white dove

Made with love, made with love

Made with glue and a glove and some pliers


Swings a low sickle arc

From its perch in the dark

Settle down

Settle down

Settle down my desire


And the moment i slept

I was swept up in a terrible tremor

Though no longer bereft, how i shook

And i couldn't remember

And then the furthermost shake

Drove a murdering stake in

And cleft me right down through my center

And i shouldn't say so

But i know that it was then or never


Push me back into a tree

Bind my buttons with salt

Fill my long ears with bees

Braying 'please, please, please,

Oh you ought not!

No you ought not!'


And then this system of strings

Tugs on the tip of my wings

Cut from cardboard and old magazines

Makes me warble and rise like a sparrow


And in the place where i stood

Is a circle of wood

A quarter to which you chop and you stack in your barrow


And it is terribly good

To carry water and chop wood

Streaked with soot, heavy booted and wild-eyed


As i crash through the rafters

And the ropes and the pulleys trail after

And the holiest, holiest belfry burns sky high


And then a slow lip of fire

Moves across the prairie with precision

While somewhere with your pliers and glue

You make your first incision

And in a moment of almost unbearable vision

Doubled over with the hunger of lions

'Hold me close', cooed the dove

Who was stuffed now with sawdust and diamonds


I wanted to say 'why the long face?'

[slowly slip away with your long face] 

Sparrow perch and play songs of long face

Burro buck and bray songs of long face

Sings 'i will swallow your sadness and eat your cold clay

Just to lift your long face

And though it may be madness, i will take to the grave

Your precious long face

& though our bones they may break & our souls separate

Why the long face? Milkymoon

And though our bodies recoil from the grip of the soil

Why the long face?'

[it was not my mistake,

It was not your miskate;

There is a bell beneath the lake

And verily the spell begins to break

And verily the spell begins to break]


In the trough of the waves

Which are pawing like dogs

Between pale-faced and grave

As i write in my log

And then i hear a noise from the hull

Seven days out to sea

And it is the damnable bell

And it tolls, i believe, that it tolls

It tolls for me!

And it tolls for me!


And though my wrists and my waist

Seem so easy to break

Still my dear i would have walked you to the edge of the water


And they will recognise

All the lines of your face

In the face of the daughter, of the daughter, of my daughter


And darling we will be fine

But what was yours and mine

Appears to be a sandcastle that the gibbering wave takes


But if it's all just the same

Then say my name, say my name,

Say my name in the morning so that i know when the wave breaks


I wasn't born of a whistle

Or milked from a thistle at twilight

No, i was all horns and thorns

Sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright

So enough of this terror we deserve to know light

And grow evermore lighter and lighter

You would have seen me through

But i could not undo that desire


Oh-oh, oh-oh-oh desire

Oh-oh, oh-oh-oh desire

Oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh desire milkymoon


From the top of the flight

Of the wide white stairs

Through the rest of my life

Do you wait for me there?