walk
The tide of public opinion had started
to abate
the neighbors, bless them, had
turned out to be all talk
I could see their frightened faces
peering at me through the gate
I was looking for an end to this, for
some kind of closure,
Time moved so rapidly, I had no hope
of keeping track of it
I thought of my friends who had died
of exposure
and I remembered other ones who had
died from the lack of it
And in my best shoes I started falling
forward down the street
I stopped at a church and jostled
through the crowd
and love followed just behind me,
panting at my feet
As the steeple tore the stomach from a
lonely little cloud
Inside I sat seeking the presence of
a God
I searched through the pictures in a
leather-bound book
I found a wooly lamb dozing in an issue
of blood
And a gilled Jesus shivering on a
Fisherman’s hook
Babe
It seems so long
Since you’ve been gone away
And I
Just got to say
That it grows darker with the day
Back on the street I saw a great big
Smiling sun
It was a Good day and an Evil day and
all was bright and new
It seemed to me that most
destruction was being done
by those who could not choose
between the two
Amateurs, dilettantes, hacks,
cowboys, clones
The streets groaned with little Caesars,
Napoleons, and cunts
With their building blocks and their tiny
plastic phones
Counting on their fingers, with the crumbs
down their throats
I passed by your garden, saw you with
your flowers
The Magnolias, Camellias and Azaleas
so sweet
and I stood there invisible in the
panicking crowds,
You looked so beautiful in the rising heat
I smell smoke, see little fires bursting on
the lawns
people carrying on regardless, listening to
their hands
Great cracks appear in the pavement,
the earth yawns
Bored and disgusted, to do us down
Babe
It seems so long
Since you’ve been gone
And I
Just got to say
That it grows darker with the day
These streets are frozen now, I come
and go
Full of a longing for something I do
not know
My father sits slumped in the
deepening snow
As I search, in and out, above,
about and below
Babe
it seems so long
Since you’ve been gone
Since you went away
And I
hope and I pray
That it grows darker with the day.
Nick Cave
Darker With The Day
From no more shall we part
2001 Reprise Records