village song

The farmer's wife cooks at the window
In that small cottage under the willow
Over the river, so freezing, so cold

In that white house up on the hill
Where a man saw a way out
And took it he did
A family moved in
I don't think they know

And the blackberry juice drips like blood on the leaves
And the blood on the fox drips like dew from its teeth
And the dew in the field falls like petals, so sweet
And the petals they fall and turn brown at my feet
And the rhythms of autumn wash over me

When I return from my city to home
I pass by the churchyard
He's standing alone
That elderly man whose wife I did know

Her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother too
All sleep side by side beneath the green dew
That elderly man thinks that he'll join them soon

And the apples they fall like the shells from the guns
And the shotgun it misses the hare when he runs
And he moves like the wind with cold air in his lungs
And his little warm heart beats in fear like a drum

And the night it draws in like the hand that will fall
With its scythen black curtain make tombs of us all
And the sun's little visits are starting to shorten
And the village it lives through the rhythms of autumn

And the creatures die at the hand of those who kill
And the leaves will decay by the winters that chill
And some will pass on by their own desperate will
Just like that man in the white house on the hill

And the blackberry juice drips like blood on the leaves
And the blood on the fox drips like dew from its teeth
And the dew in the field falls like petals, so sweet
And the petals they fall and turn brown at my feet

And the rhythms of water wash over me
And the rhythms of water watch over me