There's Something At The Bottom Of The Black Pool

There's something at the bottom of the black pool
I daren't dredge it up not while the weather's still cool
A feathered thing it's origins mixed and untrue
Once a straw body, now a lamb picker, now a clove in a black brew
I think of the peacocks of the gorge and I think of the gryphons they keep in the Tower Zoo
An unexpected torrent swept all before it
as it rushed on terribly through

And left them all here, and spread through the park
Amid the myriad mangles of the coming dark -
of the shadow of a loon, the howl from the bloody craw
those strange interruptions don't scare me anymore,
Since all the while the weather was cool I stood at the crumbling edge of the black pool

Perhaps a pidgeon fell off it's stool,
I have drowned a conscience or two,
There are palm trees and clouds and the undersides of drowned blues
and sometimes the faces of people I think I knew
I know at one time this thing flew,
I have sunk an ambition or two,
Now when I think to drink, then I wonder with who,
I pretend that I'm sitting in the booth with you -

O what a fuckin' sentence, what a fuckin' noise
I don't know these girls, I don't trust these boys
And over there in the corner, there hangs a strange bird
Sings a strange song but it won't be heard
A song to enquire whither went the milk money
While the darling babes of Toorak are a'yowling for their honey

Let's walk up this hill, let's go walking on up this hill,
The sun is in the middle of the sky, the grass is yellow from being dry,
There's music, there's you, many others here and I,
Up the hill then, up where those holy lodestones lie -
How suddenly still, and though the wind blow,
From here we will never leave or go,
And but for a will, but for companions,
we might go tumbling home below,
To a place at the table, to gamble and settle,
Make the words "amiable" and "able"
of resting assured, in the breast of bird,
that I sure did not suffer a fool,
Since all the while the weather was cool I stood at the crumbling edge of the black pool