Tiny Hands (Au Revoir)

I awoke in the summer

The sun struck the earth to furnish us with fire

But jealous hands fashioned their cross to a sword

Brandished their gift as a torch to burn the light

To the dead we owe only the truth, the human condition

Surveying the space between the nave I saw my own infernal grave

Existential imperfection

We sat scrawling out notes on scratched oak tombs

Bullets bouncing off stonewall

Saints laid to rest by our forebear

At their children, at the dissidence of despair

This proximal milieu could close the door

To the closeness that keeps us inside the spaces that we hide

My heart burns cold as life leaves my daughter's eyes

I am the mother of the dying, the dust, the denouement

How can absence take my father's house?

How can nothing take my daughter's life?

Walk me out from this tomb

(If you are the gate could you make a way?)

Come down from that cross

(Hold out your hands so I can see)

Je suis sorti vivant du four crématoire

Je suis le témoin sacré de l'église

Je suis une mère qui a tout perdu

This fire burns your name on my lips

This smoke chokes your song on my throat

Now let death lynch my lungs

I offer what's left of this withering tongue

But oh, no exit so bright as the light that shines behind the son

I leapt through stained glass saints

To fall to the garden where we first begun