Gangs of Gypsies

Fables and stories
The auld ones told me
When I was just a baby
Their words washed o'er me
No gods adore me
A boy takes that as his own duty

See all the angels in a dream, none of them to comfort me
All the love I used to know, living in a town where I can't go
The Pharaoh and Moses go twelve bareknuckle rounds for your mind

I consorted freely
With gangs of gypsies
Poets, wastrels, condemned winos
Who took nothing from me
I gave it all willingly
Before it even comes then it goes
Speak the name and it's gone upon the wind

See all the angels in a dream, none of them to come for me
All the love I used to know, living in a town where I can't go
The Pharaoh and Moses go twelve bareknuckle rounds for your mind

A Reading from the Book of Exodus:
Open your hand that you may find the river in the wilderness
And forest in an emptiness
Open that you may see the snows fall on the sands of the sun
And both men drew long into labouring lungs
And no one could tell the blood of one from the blood of the other
Once it was spilled and forsaken
This is the Word of the Ghost

Speak the name and it's gone upon the wind

See all the angels in a dream, none of them to come for me
All the love I used to know, living in a town where I can't go
The Pharaoh and Moses go twelve bareknuckle rounds for your mind

Be done with waiting
There's no soul for saving
Sing no song of goodbye
Life replayed in flashes
Then long reels of sadness
Ashes scattered long before I died
Speak the name and it's gone upon the wind

See all the angels in a dream, none of them to come for me
All the love I used to know, living in a town where I can't go
Through parted sea come riding gangs of gypsies
The Pharaoh and Moses go twelve bareknuckle rounds for your mind