Music and lyrics by Damon Waitkus

Lyrics

When I heard them testing the gallows
and then pounding on the chime,
I was ill in the courthouse
and I begged them for some time
to digest the strange injustice
in the name they gave my crime,
so thy pointed to the mountainside
and instructed me to climb.

I had one night ‘til the dogs’ release.
They assured me I’d be tracked.
Understand, son, I’m a human,
and I felt I’d been attacked.
Understand, son, nothing’s clear to me,
but in time you have to act,
so you spill some blood and a paper trail
and the blood is just abstract.

I was a king before the coup.
I had the same disease as you,
I only saw it through.

Like a hatchet down the sidewalk,
he split his bloody way.
We were partners then in the charge of men
who would do anything for pay.
But when I called on him to join my climb,
he laughed at me and told me he would stay.
And when I turn my back upon the court,
I know what he will say:
He’ll say he doesn’t know the first thing
about no horseplay
and he doesn’t know the first thing
about no seventh day
and he doesn’t care for fields of goldenrod
or bullion spun from hay,
but if they’ll follow him up the mountainside
he’ll show them where it lay.

He took us to jungles in the East,
he made us ride the backs of beasts,
he had the bellows of a priest
ruffling the flock before a feast.
I was a king before the coup,
I had the same disease as you,
I only lived it through.

When the sun set on the mountainside
my heart began to race.
I thought that if you waited out the fall of night,
night itself was its own place
with its own boreal gardens
and its own celestial face,
but my heart gave out.
My heart gave out.

August Houston and its swirling sands, call off your curs.
I will bury my face in its secret place among the firs.