Heijira [Travelogue]

[Verse 1]

I'm traveling in some vehicle

I’m sitting in some café

A defector from the petty wars

That shell shock love away

[Verse 2]

There's comfort in melancholy

When there's no need to explain

It’s just as natural as the weather

In this moody sky today

[Verse 3]

In our possessive coupling

So much could not be expressed

So now I'm returning to myself

These things that you and I suppressed

[Verse 4]

I see something of myself in everyone

Just at this moment of the world

As snow gathers like bolts of lace

Waltzing on a ballroom girl

[Verse 5]

You know it never has been easy

Whether you do or you do not resign

Whether you travel the breadth of extremities

Or stick to some straighter line

[Verse 6]

Now here's a man and a woman sitting on a rock

They're either going to thaw out or freeze

Listen, strains of Benny Goodman

Coming through the snow and the pinewood trees

[Verse 7]

I'm porous with travel fever

But you know I'm so glad to be on my own

Still somehow the slightest touch of a stranger

Can set up trembling in my bones

[Verse 8]

I know no one's going to show me everything

We all come and go unknown

Each so deep and superficial

Between the forceps and the stone

[Verse 9]

Well I looked at the granite markers

Those tribute to finality to eternity

And then I looked at myself here

Chicken scratching for my immortality

[Verse 10]

In the church they light the candles

And the wax rolls down like tears

There's the hope and the hopelessness

I’ve witnessed thirty years

[Verse 11]

We’re only particles of change I know I know

Orbiting around the sun

But how can I have that point of view

When I'm always bound and tied to someone

[Verse 12]

White flags of winter chimneys

Waving truce against the moon

In the mirrors of a modern bank

From the window of a hotel room

[Verse 13]

I’m traveling in some vehicle

I'm sitting in some café

A defector from the petty wars

Until love sucks me back that way