Two Friends Take a Bow for the Record

By Simon Joyner

On Songs for the New Year

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Perhaps we were cut out of the same cloth or cardboard

Or maybe you were carved out of soap and I out of driftwood

Maybe we've got nothing in common but a sorrow withstood

By distance and devotion

My eyes belong to shapes that travel at light speed going nowhere

Across the screen of my dreams straight out into the frozen thin air

But if you've seen one blow by you're surely lost a dozen somewhere

It's a crutch that ain't much for leaning

Through my window through the trees there is a train about to leave me yearning

With a whistle to stop my heart and coal for burning

The four loose chambers while the wheels continue turning

And slipping through my fingers

So let's drink a little wine while we can

Fill our glasses until they spill and say Amen

Come on brother go on and cup your hands

We'll say goodbye and let it end

I've been trying to recall the details of the fall from the apple

To the sons of those exiled traced through to the burial

Of one single brother who was slain by the other and the evil

That spilled into the mud where there once was a garden

I thought perhaps you caught your death you wandered and vanished

I thought maybe into the vast abyss without so much as a compass

But you returned just in time to do a little more damage

Like a drum roll at the gallows

Now the sky is full of flames that burn and then rain only ashes

The thunder sounds tame compared to the heart when it crashes

Against solemn sleep as a silhouette creeps down your lashes

And the hallways fill up with laughter

So let's drink a little wine while we can

Fill our glasses until they spill and say Amen

Come on brother go on and cup your hands

We'll say goodbye and let it end