Album: England Keep My Bones (2011)

One Foot Before The Other

On the very day I die
The very last of my desires
Is that you take my broken body
And commit it to the fire

And then when the fire is finished
Scrape the ashes in a tin
Take them down to London's drinking reservoirs
And throw them in

And then specks infinitesimal of my mortal remains
Will slide down 7 million throats and into 7 million veins
And I will creep through their capillaries to the marrow of their bones
And they will wake to bright new mornings and then wordlessly they'll know

That I remain
I am remembered
I remain
I am remembered

So these 7 million innocents
They will have me in their blood
And when they die they'll burn their bodies
Or be buried in the mud
And I will spread through streams and rivers like a virus through a host
From the hamlets to the cities from the rivers to the coast
And from there into the channel across the great Atlantic Ocean
And ever onwards to the new world
Through the waters gentle motions
Until parts of me are part of every land mass every sea
In the rain, up on your crops and in the very air you breath

I remain
I am remembered
I remain
I am remembered
I remain

And all the things I love will be washed away in the rain
I remain

I'm not convinced of the existence of these things that don't exist
Yeah by Jewish boys with big ideas and scratches on their wrist
By a loving or a vengeful God
Or one who condescends
Who'll wash his hands down in the mire among the misery of men
Or by ever turning circles hanging timeless in the sky
Like a dream catcher distracting from the fact you're gonna die

But I place one foot before the other
Confident because
I know that everything we are right now is everything that was
That Watt Tyler, Woody, Guthrie, Dostoevsky and Davy Jones
Are all dissolved into the ether and have crept into my bones
And all the cells in all the lines upon the backs of both my hands
Were once carved into the details of two feet upon the sand

We remain
We are remembered
We remain
We are remembered
We remain

And all the things we love
Will be washed away in the rain
We remain