Lyrics
We tramped in our black coats, sweeping time, sweeping time
In the red forest, emerging to face the day
Pink with iodine, wet, bedraggled, a bit gone
Adorned in flowers, radiant, radioactive
Following a trail we somehow knew
Rain no longer rain, tears no longer tears
And the grail, oh, the grail was this close
Finished with foil, wrapped in plutonium
We rambled strange forests, not a living thing
But the buzzing of flies and mischievous fairies who danced underfoot
Branches snapped in our faces
Our kingdom behind a chain-link fence
We had our contamination coronations
We grappled in the quarries
We polished marbles and we knelt and shot for spoils
In our fervent circles
We set up our furious camps, our tents punctuated with pegs
Nicked with pocketknives, little foxes gauging the hard earth
Cursing the bottomland for making us soft
We gathered rye, stuffed sacks, made pillows for our men
We were soldiers with no war
We wrung the blood from soaking beds
We covered the martyrs' rolling heads
We balanced the buckets filled to the brim
And we saw nothing and everything
Our ships boasted obscenities scribbled on parchment sails
Floating illiterate rivers, overturned in pools of rainwater muck
We blew songs of praise into horns of sacred animals
Catcalls, confessions, teenage prayers
Woven into tapestries of cloistered gardens
No mother had we now
Vowels erupted with a new violence, bearing no ill will
Save to be born contaminated with a dust
That sparkled with such strangeness
We wept for joy
A blue light projected from the cap of being
We climbed the stairs into a bluer heaven
Scarred with streamers, bleeding the wind
We savored the spectacle and then it disappeared
But we were already gone
We possessed a new radiance
Dew dropped from our noses
We boasted shining skin, shedding it without a sigh