There bleeds a river through our gardens
With all the litter of the seasons
It scarred our bodies as we fought them
But without them, we never really grew
There bleeds a river through our gardens
With all the litter of the seasons
It scarred our bodies as we fought them
But without them, we never really grew
The spring advances like a walker
The way a city grows a skin
The moss unreeling over bricks unfeeling
In the wind we shiver like an instar
Youth becomes a wish becomes a winter
We stalk our shadows on the snow
For all our kisses still the woods resist us
For they know we're nothing but an instar
There bleeds a river through our gardens
With all the litter of the seasons
It scarred our bodies as we fought them
But without them, we never really grew
The lake it brings some wings a-humming
To write some claret message on my arm
That this incarnation, this divine creation
Your perfection is nothing but an instar
There bleeds a river through our gardens
With all the litter of the seasons
It scarred our bodies as we fought them
But without them, we never really grew
The ancients draped their poor in honey
To keep mosquitoes from the king
Will all our ages, all of history's wreckages
Be a sting, or nothing but an instar?
There bleeds a river through our gardens
With all the litter of the seasons
It scarred our bodies as we fought them
But without them, we never really grew