Standard (EADGBE)

So without a thought I thought I'd take a final walk

The tide of public opinion had started to abate

The neighbors (bless 'em) had turned out to be all talk

I could see their frightened faces peering at me through the gate

Was looking for an end to this for some kind of closure

Time moved so rapidly I had no hope of keeping track of it

And I thought of my friends who had died of exposure

And I remembered all the ones who had died from the lack of it

And in my best shoes I started falling forward down the street

Stopped at a church and jostled through the crowd

Love followed just behind me panting at my feet as the

Steeple tore the stomach from a lonely little cloud

Inside I sat seeking the presence of a God

Searched through the pictures in a leather-bound book

And I found a wooly lamb dozing in an issue of blood

And a gilled Jesus shivering on a fisherman's hook

Babe

It seems so long

Since you've been gone away

And I just gotta say

That it grows darker with the day

Back on the street I saw a great, big smiling sun

It was a good day and an evil day and all was bright and new

And it seemed to me the most destruction was being done

By those who could not choose between the two

Amateurs, dilettantes, hacks, cowboys, clones

The streets groaned with little ceasars, napoleons, and cunts

With their building blocks and their tiny plastic phones

Counting on their fingers with the crumbs down their fronts

I passed by garden so you with your flowers

The camellias, magnolias, and azaleas so sweet

I stood there invisible in the panicking crowds

You looked so beautiful in the rising heat

I smell smoke see little fires bursting on the lawns

People carry on regardless listening to their hands

Great cracks appear in the pavement, the earth yawns

Bored in disgusted to do us down

Babe

It seems so long

Since you've been gone away

And I just gotta say

That it grows darker with the day

All these streets are frozen now; I come and go

Full of a longing for something I do not know

My father sits slumped in the deepening snow

As I search in and out, above, about, and below

Babe

It seems so long

Since you've been gone away

And I hope and I pray

That it grows darker with the day