Black Madonna will come down for you

With open arms and a veil to hide her face

And Black Madonna will come down for you

And there is no sickness and there is no suffering

And there is no anguish and no anger that she cannot erase



You might see Black Madonna walking between the sheets of an angry day

Or you might see her smile a strange-sad smile as she steps out of your way

Or you might not see her at all

But she might be coming down for you

With her arms spread wide and her head on fire

‘cause she sees you been down so long



There isn't a sin that you could make that she will not forgive



But oh, Black Madonna, I did not believe her beauty

I thought I did not need her mercy

I thought I did not need

Traded my belongings and my body

My memory and my mind

My center of gravity and my sense of direction

‘til I woke up half an hour from the city

And realized I had lost all sense of the passage of time

So I don't know if it's been a day or a week or a year

All I know is I'm still here

And I always thought you'd lift me up

And you never did

What the fuck?



>>there isn't a sin that you could make

That she will not forgive

No there isn't a sin that you could make

In the ways that a stray must live



So what I wanna know is this

If you believe in everything fitting into a kind of place

If you believe that everything and everybody has a certain space they fit into—babies entering into a welcoming world in jubilant curls of star gazing wonder

And the sick yes even the sick just a shuffling into sleep's dark brother

And the sleepers in the sleet

The heaps in the street

Nestled under trestles for to get a little heat

And if the trestles watch over the sleepers

And if life ushers her lucky winners

Through fleshy gates to four star dinners

And if sleep ushers his population

To plug into the dream life radio station

And if thin souls whose bodies haven't wrecked them

Walk smoky streets that know and expect them

Then what I want to know is this—

What of strays who have turned their backs on the god of strays?



>>what of strays who've turned their backs

On the god of strays, yeah, what of them?



Oh Black Madonna I was thinking about the days that I spent with you

‘cause now I doze and daze and drown

And cling to the wreckage of a sinking town

And I walk your dire streets in search of anything that's still pure

‘cause I once thought you watched over me

But now I'm not so sure