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.
supported by 7 fans who also own “For His Old Branches (Alternate)”
Taylor Swift has three songs in my Top 25 favorite songs of all time. Twenty-two other people are tied for second place. This cover of "Blank Space" is excellent and has a good chance of breaking into my Top 25. bruce123
supported by 7 fans who also own “For His Old Branches (Alternate)”
Clever thought provoking lyrics,
"You had built a new face, empty but awake, painted it the one shade you could never fake"
Beautifully composed. This is a re-recording of "His Old Branches" yet manages to feel fresh and important to The Republic of Wolves discography. I'm joining a cult.