We Shall Live Again

I boarded the Pullman somewhere east of Council Bluffs I've been riding this train to the west now for so long That I can't remember when The clouds are at the wind's command A great extinction is close at hand But we shall live again We shall live again We shall live again Though our religion's the same as the pigeons From Francis of Assisi To the fans of AC-DC We all shall live again But the nightingales were seized with a panic As warplanes flew o'er the green Atlantic But the day was fair beyond compare And the long parade and the serenade We shall live again We shall live again We shall live again We'll be painting roses with grandma Moses And we'll feel just as free and young As those flowers we stand among And we shall live again Well, this train is like an endless parade That passes by each and every home in each and every town And the women and the children and the men They hover to the doorways and the windows Some hop on board, some wave farewell Or weep at the beauty of the crossing bell But we all shall live again I've been in most of these Motels on the edge of reality I even rode my donkey over the mountains of Argentina Some die on the steppes of a frozen wasteland Some OD on the road to Graceland But we all shall live again We shall live again We shall live again I find these truth to be self-evident In this life where any joyful thing Is paid to fold in suffering We shall live again But the train pressed on under night's crumbling waves Through the dreamlike districts of the vanished days A dead man falls from a trotting horse The rivers run backward to their ancient source We all shall live again But the dining car is filled mostly with Victorian-era ghosts And some sharpshooters firing at angels Like startled ducks on the horizon But you here with me when I close my eyes Giving alms to trembling palms Your eyes so green and labyrinthine Hey, you remember Hegel, that beautiful son of a bitch Or Marcel Proust, you thought he ruled the roosts? He's drinking a drink that's black as ink Watching a candied cherry sink It's like the sorrow of the world distilled We shall live again We shall live again All the great nations of the Western plains There'll be no more anguish and no more fear And no more bloodshed on the red frontier And we shall live again But the wind took my train up into the chasms of the sky And in the air hung a golden trumpet Some warn of heaven and its narrow gate The baby angels are armed and overweight As they float above the turnstile and sing You shall live again You shall live again This world is ours and all the stars It's like the icing on a cake of death And the only word that rhymes is breath We shall live again