There is a wheel
That spins to keep the river flowing
It runs a course between your eyelids and your aching jaws
There was a bird
Who took your voice and turned it backwards
He and the past were aiming arrows at your heaving chest
You took a train into the mouth of all you hated
Spent half an hour watching hope pass through a window
You’ve got that singing crown of thorns
Around your thick head
You and the kid that you once were
Are fighting over it
(Then we ran down the river Van
To the mouth of old Fenrir
And he swallowed us up)
I collected rocks, filled up my pockets
And tried to swim across the stream
I was told I’d be kept afloat
By the ghosts of the hills that I’d flattened to get here
Trusted a fiend and lost my hand
My blood flowed white and filled the canyon
And I saw faces in the leaves
And they were preaching to me
There is a tree you cannot cut
He knows your name and all your fears
You dare not lay an axe to his old branches
They dug a coal mine by your house
His yelling kept you up all night
All of your friends got caught between his black teeth
We left our shoes under the ground
Tied yellow feathers to our arms
And learned the language of the aching mountain
Then I went out west
And tried to build a better version of myself
My iron tools got swallowed up by spirits
And I knew my head was inside out
So I sold my soul to taste the clouds
Ate from the tree and started digging up the ground
There is a thought you cannot shake
Of her asleep under the lake
The ice is eating up the surface and you are the fish
Sleeping peacefully