Tiny Hands (Au Revoir)

I awoke in the summer
The sun struck the earth to furnish us with fire
But jealous hands fashioned their cross to a sword
Brandished their gift as a torch to burn the light

To the dead we owe only the truth, the human condition
Surveying the space between the nave I saw my own infernal grave
Existential imperfection

We sat scrawling out notes on scratched oak tombs
Bullets bouncing off stonewall
Saints laid to rest by our forebear
At their children, at the dissidence of despair
This proximal milieu could close the door
To the closeness that keeps us inside the spaces that we hide
My heart burns cold as life leaves my daughter's eyes
I am the mother of the dying, the dust, the denouement

How can absence take my father's house?
How can nothing take my daughter's life?

Walk me out from this tomb
(If you are the gate could you make a way?)
Come down from that cross
(Hold out your hands so I can see)

Je suis sorti vivant du four crématoire
Je suis le témoin sacré de l'église
Je suis une mère qui a tout perdu

This fire burns your name on my lips
This smoke chokes your song on my throat
Now let death lynch my lungs
I offer what's left of this withering tongue

But oh, no exit so bright as the light that shines behind the son
I leapt through stained glass saints
To fall to the garden where we first begun