All of This Is Chance

Clay is the word and clay is the flesh

When the potato-gatherers like mechanised scarecrows move

Along the side-fall of the hill

Clay is the word and clay is the flesh

When the mushroom-gatherers like majestic scarecrows skip

Along the side-fall of the hill

Watch him, watch him, that man on a hill whose spirit

Is a wet sack flapping about the knees of time

He lives that his little fields may stay fertile when his own body

Is spread in the bottom of a ditch under two coulters crossed in Christ's Name

Be easy

Come with me, Imagination, into this iron house

And we will watch from the doorway the years run back

And we will know what a peasant's left hand wrote on the page

Be easy, October

No cackle hen, horse neigh, tree sough, duck quack

No cackle hen, horse neigh, tree sough, duck quack

Man, walk on the moon, eat with the stars, try and touch the sun

Burn, burn, burn

Child, stars in her eyes, eat with her hands, falling from the skies

Turn, turn, turn

See a boy in a field dig with his hands pearls from the soil

Learn, learn, learn

The soil itself will turn on me, say

"Son, you're destined for many things"

The soil itself did turn for me

Mycelium sang to me from the springs

I saw every colour underneath the sun

Turn around the shapes beneath the moon

I flew through a halo in Antarctica

On the coldest day the South Pole knew

And all of this is chance as any chance is chance

As chance it is we end up in the womb

But when I was evicted, love, I never knew

I was allowed to leave the iron room

To realise we're guided by the vaguest shade of sins

Yet notice we still notice that is not where we begin

Are you frightened of dying?

Are you frightened of the dead?

Are you frightened of living, that you don′t live, instead?

Hear, bird in a tree, tree in a cage, never use his wings

Sing, sing, sing