Cold, Cold Ground

This leprous home in the summer
Where they cut a nick a in your heel
There, with the walls running red like blood
The hobbled heart, the fate sealed

Outside, two birds are oblivious
All skinny sinew and wing
They swooped and dived and they never felt
The winter winds creeping in

Oh, each pale white ghost that silently howls
Oh, you've got to learn how to lay them down
Into the cold, cold ground

Now that the hearth's frozen solid
We clutch our bedclothes so tight
And pass like mutes in the icy halls
Inert and lost in the night

Outside, the bough has been broken
And eggshells litter the ground
The nest destroyed by the winter winds
Two lost little birds flutter round

Oh, each pale white ghost that silently howls
Oh, you've got to learn how to lay them down
Into the cold, cold ground

And look how you've left us -
Broken and dumb in the snow
And look what you've made us -
Crippled and blind with no home

I found the poem that you'd written
And just left lying around
You wrote that a fragmented family
Was like a ship run aground

Oh, I think you wanted it to be found
Oh, but now I'm ready to lay it down
Into the cold, cold ground
Oh, each pale white ghost that silently howls
Oh, you've got to learn how to lay them down
Into the cold, cold ground