stefanos rokos

As I sat sadly by her side | At the window, through the glass | She stroked a kitten in her lap | And we watched the world as it fell past | Softly she spoke these words to me | And with brand new eyes, open wide | We pressed our faces to the glass | As I sat sadly by her side | She said, “Father, mother, sister, brother | Uncle, aunt, nephew, niece | Soldier, sailor, physician, labourer | Actor, scientist, mechanic, priest | Earth and moon and sun and stars | Planets and comets with tails blazing | All are there forever falling | Falling lovely and amazing” | Then she smiled and turned to me | And waited for me to reply | Her hair was falling down her shoulders | As I sat sadly by her side | As I sat sadly by her side | The kitten she did gently pass | Over to me and again we pressed | Our different faces to the glass | “That may be very well”, I said | “But watch the one falling in the street | See him gesture to his neighbours | See him trampled beneath their feet | All outward motion connects to nothing | For each is concerned with their immediate need | Witness the man reaching up from the gutter | See the other one stumbling on who can not see” | With trembling hand I turned toward her | And pushed the hair out of her eyes | The kitten jumped back to her lap | As I sat sadly by her side | Then she drew the curtains down | And said, “When will you ever learn | That what happens there beyond the glass | Is simply none of your concern? | God has given you but one heart | You are not a home for the hearts of your brothers | And God does not care for your benevolence | Anymore than he cares for the lack of it in others | Nor does he care for you to sit | At windows in judgement of the world He created | While sorrows pile up around you | Ugly, useless and over-inflated” | At which she turned her head away | Great tears leaping from her eyes | I could not wipe the smile from my face | As I sat sadly by her side

And no more shall we part | It will no longer be necessary | And no more will I say, dear heart | I am alone and she has left me | And no more shall we part | The contracts are drawn up, the ring is locked upon the finger | And never again will my letters start | Sadly, or in the depths of winter | And no more shall we part | All the hatchets have been buried now | And all of birds will sing to your beautiful heart | Upon the bough | And no more shall we part | Your chain of command has been silenced now | And all of those birds would’ve sung to your beautiful heart | Anyhow | Lord, stay by me | Don’t go down | I will never be free | If I’m not free now | Lord, stay by me | Don’t go down | I never was free | What are you talking about? | For no more shall we part | And no more shall we part

On the first day of May I took to the road | I’d been staring out the window most of the morning | I’d watched the rain claw at the glass | And a vicious wind blew hard and fast | I should have taken it as a warning | As a warning As a warning | As a warning | I’d given my nurse the weekend off | My meals were ill prepared | My typewriter had turned mute as a tomb | And my piano crouched in the corner of my room | With all its teeth bared | All its teeth bared All its teeth bared | All its teeth bared | Hallelujah Hallelujah | Hallelujah Hallelujah | I left my house without my coat | Something my nurse would not have allowed | And I took the small roads out of town | And I passed a cow and the cow was brown | And my pyjamas clung to me like a shroud | Like a shroud Like a shroud | Like a shroud | There rose before me a little house | With all hope and dreams kept within | A woman’s voice close to my ear | Said, “Why don’t you come in here?” | “You looked soaked to the skin” | Soaked to the skin Soaked to the skin | Soaked to the skin | Hallelujah Hallelujah | Hallelujah Hallelujah | I turned to the woman and the woman was young | I extended a hearty salutation | But I knew if my nurse had been here | She would never in a thousand years | Permit me to accept that invitation | Invitation That invitation | That invitation | Now, you might think it wise to risk it all | Throw caution to the reckless wind | But with her hot cocoa and her medication | My nurse had been my one salvation | So I turned back home | I turned back home I turned back home | Singing my song | Hallelujah | The tears are welling in my eyes again | Hallelujah | I need twenty big buckets to catch them in | Hallelujah | And twenty pretty girls to carry them down | Hallelujah | And twenty deep holes to bury them in | Hallelujah | The tears are welling in my eyes again | Hallelujah | I need twenty big buckets to catch them in | Hallelujah | And twenty pretty girls to carry them down | Hallelujah | And twenty deep holes to bury them in

I hold this letter in my hand | A plea, a petition, a kind of prayer | I hope it does as I have planned | Losing her again is more than I can bear | I kiss the cold, white envelope | I press my lips against her name | Two hundred words. We live in hope | The sky hangs heavy with rain | Love Letter Love Letter | Go get her Go get her | Love Letter Love Letter | Go tell her Go tell her | A wicked wind whips up the hill | A handful of hopeful words | I love her and I always will | The sky is ready to burst | Said something I did not mean to say | Said something I did not mean to say | Said something I did not mean to say | It all came out the wrong way | Love Letter Love Letter | Go get her Go get her | Love Letter Love Letter | Go tell her Go tell her | Rain your kisses down upon me | Rain your kisses down in storms | And for all who ’ll come before me | In your slowly fading forms | I ’m going out of my mind | Will leave me standing in | The rain with a letter and a prayer | Whispered on the wind | Come back to me | Come back to me | Oh baby please come back to me

We’ve laid the cables and the wires | We’ve split the wood and stoked the fires | We’ve lit our town so there is no | Place for crime to hide | Our little church is painted white | And in the safety of the night | We all go quiet as a mouse | For the word is out | God is in the house | God is in the house | God is in the house | No cause for worry now | God is in the house | Moral sneaks in the White House | Computer geeks in the school house | Drug freaks in the crack house | We don’t have that stuff here | We have a tiny little Force | But we need them of course | For the kittens in the trees | And at night we are on our knees | As quiet as a mouse | For God is in the house | God is in the house | God is in the house | And no one’s left in doubt | God is in the house | Homos roaming the streets in packs | Queer bashers with tyre-jacks | Lesbian counter-attacks | That stuff is for the big cities | Our town is very pretty | We have a pretty little square | We have a woman for a mayor | Our policy is firm but fair | Now that God is in the house | God is in the house | God is in the house | Any day now He’ll come out | God is in the house | Well-meaning little therapists | Goose-stepping twelve-stepping Tetotalitarianists | The tipsy, the reeling and the drop down pissed | We got no time for that stuff here | Zero crime and no fear | We’ve bred all our kittens white | So you can see them in the night | And at night we’re on our knees | As quiet as a mouse | Since the word got out | From the North down to the South | For no-one’s left in doubt | There’s no fear about | If we all hold hands and very quietly shout | Hallelujah | God is in the house | God is in the house | Oh I wish He would come out | God is in the house

I thought I’d take a walk today | It’s a mistake I sometimes make | My children lay asleep in bed | My wife lay wide-awake | I kissed her softly on the brow | I tried not to make a sound | But with stony eyes she looked at me | And gently squeezed my hand | Call it a premonition, call it a crazy vision | Call it intuition, something learned from mother | But when she looked up at me, I could clearly see | The Sword of Damocles hanging directly above her | Oh Lord Oh my Lord | Oh Lord | How have I offended thee? | Wrap your tender arms around me | Oh Lord Oh Lord | Oh My Lord | They called at me through the fence | They were not making any sense | They claimed that I had lost the plot | Kept saying that I was not | The man I used to be | They held their babes aloft | Threw marsh mellows at the Security | And said that I’d grown soft | Call it intuition, call it a creeping suspicion | But their words of derision meant they hardly knew me | For even I could see in the way they looked at me | The Spear of Destiny sticking right through me | Oh Lord Oh my lord | Oh Lord | How have I offended thee? | Wrap your tender arms round me | Oh Lord Oh lord | Oh My Lord | Now I’m at the hairdressers | People watch me as they move past | A guy wearing plastic antlers | Presses his bum against the glass | Now I’m down on my hands and knees | And it’s so fucking hot! | Someone cries, “What are you looking for?” | I scream, “The plot, the plot!” | I grab my telephone, I call my wife at home | She screams, “Leave us alone!” I say, “Hey, it’s only me” | The hairdresser with his scissors, he holds up the mirror | I look back and shiver; I can’t even believe what I can see | Be mindful of the prayers you send | Pray hard but pray with care | For the tears that you are crying now | Are just your answered prayers | The ladders of life that we scale merrily | Move mysteriously around | So that when you think you’re climbing up, man | In fact you’re climbing down | Into the hollows of glamour, where with spikes and hammer | With telescopic camera, they chose to turn the screw | Oh I hate them, Ma! Oh I hate them, Pa! | Oh I hate them all for what they went and done to you | Oh Lord Oh my Lord | Oh Lord | How have I offended thee? | Wrap your tender arms round me | Oh Lord Oh Lord | Oh My Lord

Come over here, babe | It ain’t that bad | I don’t claim to understand | The troubles that you’ve had | But the dogs you say they fed you to | Lay their muzzles in your lap | And the lions that they led you to | Lie down and take a nap | The ones you fear are wind and air | And I love you without measure | It seems we can be happy now | Be it better late than never | Sweetheart, come | Sweetheart, come | Sweetheart, come | Sweetheart, come to me | The burdens that you carry now | Are not of your creation | So let’s not weep for their evil deeds | But for their lack of imagination | Today’s the time for courage, babe | Tomorrow can be for forgiving | And if he touches you again with his stupid hands | His life won’t be worth living | Sweetheart, come | Sweetheart, come | Sweetheart, come | Sweetheart, come to me | Walk with me now under the stars | For it’s a clear and easy pleasure | And be happy in my company | For I love you without measure | Walk with me now under the stars | It’s a safe and easy pleasure | It seems we can be happy now | It’s late but it ain’t never | It’s late but it ain’t never | It’s late but it ain’t never

I married my wife on the day of the eclipse | Our friends awarded her courage with gifts | Now as the nights grow longer and the season shifts | I look to my sorrowful wife | Who is quietly tending her flowers | Who is quietly tending her …. | The water is high on the beckoning river | I made her a promise I could not deliver | And the cry of the birds sends a terrible shiver | Through me and my sorrowful wife | Who is shifting the furniture around | Who is shifting the furniture around | Now we sit beneath the knotted Yew | And the bluebells bob around our shoes | The task of remembering the telltale clues | Goes to my lovely, my sorrowful wife | Who is counting the days on her fingers | Who is counting the days on her …. | Come on and help me babe | Come on now | Help me babe | I was blind | The grass here grows long and high | Twists right up to the sky | White clouds roll on by | Come on now and help me babe | I was blind | I was a fool babe | I was blind | Come on now | A loose wind last night blew down | Black trees bent to the ground | Their blossoms made such a sound | That I could not hear myself think babe | Come on now | And help me babe | Help me now | I was blind | I was a fool

I left by the back door | With my wife’s lover’s smoking gun | I don’t know what I was hoping for | I hit the road at a run | I was your lover | I was your man | There never was no other | I was your friend | Till we came along this road | Till we came along this road | Till we came along this road | I ain’t sent you no letters, Ma | But I’m looking quite a trip | The world spinning beneath me, Ma | Guns blazing at my hip | You were my lover | You were my friend | There never was no other | On whom I could depend | Then we came along this road | We came along this road | We came along this road

Past the ivy-covered windows of The Angel | Down Athenaeum Lane to the cathedral | Through the churchyard I wandered | Sat for a spell there and I pondered | My back to the gates of the garden | My back to the gates of the garden | My back to the gates of the garden | Fugitive fathers, sickly infants, decent mothers | Runaways and suicidal lovers | Assorted boxes of ordinary bones | Of aborted plans and sudden shattered hopes | In unlucky rows, up to the gates of the garden | In unhappy rows, up to the gates of the garden | In unlucky rows, up to the gates of the garden | Won’t you meet me at the gates | Won’t you meet me at the gates | Won’t you meet me at the gates | To the garden | Beneath the creeping shadow of the tower | The bell from St. Edmunds informs me of the hour | I turn to find you waiting there for me | In sunlight and I see the way that you breathe | Alive and leaning on the gates of the garden | Alive and leaning on the gates of the garden | Alive and leaning on the gates of the garden | Leave these ancient places to the angels | Let the saints attend to their keeping of the cathedrals | And leave the dead beneath the ground so cold | For God is in this hand that I hold | As we open up the gates of the garden | Won’t you meet me at the gates | Won’t you meet me at the gates | Won’t you meet me at the gates | To the garden

As so with that, I thought I’d take a final walk | The tide of public opinion had started to abate | The neighbours, bless them, had turned out to be all talk | I could see their frightened faces peering at me through the gate | I 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 | I thought of my friends who had died of exposure | And I remembered other ones who had died from the lack of it | And in my best shoes I started falling forward down the street | I stopped at a church and jostled through the crowd | And 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 | I searched through the pictures in a leather-bound book | I found a woolly 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 got to 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 that most destruction was being done | By those who could not choose between the two | Amateurs, dilettantes, hacks, cowboys, clones | The streets groan with little Caesars, Napoleons and cunts | With their building blocks and their tiny plastic phones | Counting on their fingers, with crumbs down their fronts | I passed by your garden, saw you with your flowers | The Magnolias, Camellias and Azaleas so sweet | And 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 and disgusted, to do us down | Babe | It seems so long | Since you’ve been gone | And I | Just got to say | That it grows darker with the day | 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, below | Babe | It seems so long | Since you went away | And I | Just got to say | That it grows darker with the day

A grief came riding on the wind | Up the sullen River Thames | I was sitting on the bank with my mouth open | And I felt it enter in | I began thinking about our wedding day | And how love was a vow | I was thinking about the chamber door | That only we can enter now | I was thinking about our ancient friends | And of kissing them goodbye | Then the wind blew under Battersea Bridge | And a tear broke from my eye | And I got thinking about London | How nothing good ever came from this town | And if the Thames wasn’t so filthy | I’d jump in the river and drown | Don’t be afraid, babe, come on down | I’m just sitting here thinking aloud | A grief came riding down the wind | Up the river where the bridges crouch | Blowing people back and forth | From the marital bed to the psychiatric couch | Blowing people far apart | Blowing others so they collide | Blowing some poor bastard right out of the water | Blowing another one over the side | Hear the ancient iron bridge | Listen to it groan | With the weight of a thousand people | Leaving or returning home | To their failures, to their boredoms | To their husbands and their wives | Who are carving them up for dinner | Before they even arrive | Don’t be afraid, come on down | I’m just sitting here thinking aloud | Now look there just below the water | See the Saviour of the human race | With the fishes and the frogs | Has found his final resting place | Don’t be afraid, come on down | I’m just sitting here thinking aloud

Bless His ever loving heart | Only He knows who you are | He may seem so very far | But bless His ever loving heart | And when you’re feeling sad | And everywhere you look | You can’t believe the things you see | And when it’s all come down so hard | And beauty lies exhausted in the street | Hold His ever loving hand | Even when you do not understand | Sorrow has its natural end | Hold His ever loving hand | And when you’re feeling low | And everyone you meet | You can’t believe the things they say | And when there is no place left to go | Where someone isn’t moving you | A little further down the way | Bless His ever loving heart | What you do is what you are | When it’s all come down so hard | Bless His ever loving heart | Hold His ever loving hand | When it seems you haven’t got a friend | Only He knows who you are | Bless His ever loving heart