This Too Will Pass

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This Too Will Pass

Release date: February 2007
Format: CD, LP
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Track list:

  1. The Harvest
  2. In the Time We’ve Got
  3. Lest I Forget
  4. Mercury
  5. Cast Away
  6. Our Fall Apart
  7. You Can Still Run
  8. Fires
  9. The Echoing Airports
  10. Coming Back
  11. Your Name
  12. A Brittle Filament
  13. Where I’m Headed

Lyrics

the harvest
Eleven weeks ago, you went into the yard. Beneath an inch of snow, the ground was frozen hard. You worked to dig a hole, lit only by the glow from hope you buried deep, to see what it would grow. Oh, you haven’t told anyone. Beneath that vernal sun, you sit patiently. Oh, here comes the spring. What will bring? What will it be?

in the time we’ve got
I took you to the place where I was born. You said that it was just as I’d described. We moved in soon after the days turned warm, just in time to see the spring arrive. I watched you through the windows in our room. Your hair grew long under the arbor shade. Our love was new, but the hour grew late too soon. How suddenly that honeyed light would fade. You had the city in you. Always in the way you moved were the skyline and the avenues. You had the city in you, I knew. When the autumn came, the leaves turned one by one, ’til the barren trees were left to stand alone. You still felt the same, you said, as since we had begun, but a longing crept into the eyes I’d known. I watched you pack. I was rooted to the spot. We fell asleep a while beneath the oak. “It’s our job to live as well as we can in the time we’ve got,” was written in the note i found when I woke. You had the city in you. Always in the way you moved were the skyline and the avenues. You had the city in you, I knew. So before the weary ache wore through, you slipped back into the avenues.

lest i forget
When your father’s ghost came round, you bade him to please stay, but he just slipped away. You cried all night in bed, as I held your trembling head. I said, “You’ve lost too much too fast, but this, too, will pass.” The last night when you left for your old New England town, by the cold Long Island Sound, your winsome voice was pinched. When I leaned in close, you flinched. You’d changed so much, so fast, but I thought, “This, too, will pass.” I rode down the dark street and stopped out in the snow. I watched my friends through their front window. They laughed under the lights, but I turned back towards the night. They don’t know not to ask. Though, this, too, will pass.

mercury
My house had lain lost in darkness for weeks. On the window panes, the frost grew two inches deep, and I was caught in a long, endless sleep, dreaming I was freezing. You came into my room suddenly, spilling out sheets of light over me. The air was shimmering under the weight of the heat that you gave off so easily. You said you could not stay. You were burning up and away. Not long after you’d gone, the cold came back along. And now the ice, it will not melt, but I have not forgotten how that heat felt.

cast away
The first thing you saw, when you washed up onto the shore, were the words “I don’t love you anymore” scrawled into the sand. And as the sun and the din from the street beat you sore, you had a sudden ache for the ocean floor. Every night, you dream of the same underwater scene, where you nearly made your peace. But then, the silence suddenly ceased and, placed by an unseen hand, you were brought back to the tumult of land. The sound of the hull against the waves is not around to lull you to sleep nowadays. You just lie awake, listening to the gulls in the bay. Breathe in salt air as you stare at the ceiling, trying to recapture the feeling of being married to the sea, but your vision gets so watery. And every night, you dream of the same underwater scene. But safe beneath your sheets, it’s a long way back to that peace.

our fall apart
We stood within the dappled shade of the small backyard where we had our start. You kept your eyes on your cupped hands, held as though you might catch hold of the light. Behind the curtain of your hair, you began to say, half-turned away, “How strange to find this place unchanged to our hardened hearts, and our fall apart.”

you can still run
No roof overhead, so you slept under stars. There’s nobody now who knows where you are. They’re still dragging the lake, that ache in the heart of town where you watched everything you had go down. It sank so fast, it made no sound. There’s still blood in your veins, and a history in scars. It’s thirty miles to the state line, but you can still run that far. Dreamt of ropes at your throat, where your voice had been caught. Woke to a damp gray dawn, and your tangle of thoughts. The only things you’ve still got in this colorless place, this tightening knot. Felt a chill run through, like you’d never seen the sun. But you’ve still got your will, and you can still run. You can still run.

fires
The fires have gone out. The sirens have died down. They’re leaving you now, in this dark end of town. And the adrenaline taste’s just a sharp, bitter trace. Like the flush in your face, it’s fading away.

the echoing airports
I go to airports and wait by the gate for arriving flights. I go to airports to watch the lovers reunite. I go to airports. In every city, they’re the same. The lonely airports, echoing with all the shouted names of loves who’ve been caught sight of, returned from miles away, from tiny lights receding into the night at the end of a runway. I go to airports. They blur together nowadays: one single airport, a winding, interminable maze. I go to airports to be near strangers’ hopes and aches. I go to airports to remember all of the mistakes we made, the plans we laid, and how they went astray, ’til you were lights, receding into the night at the end of a runway. Flourescent lights hum overhead. “Sometime soon, we’ll meet again,” you’d said. The dull air in the waiting halls these nights. It’s almost the same as then, but in the end, not quite.

coming back
The cops all know you’ve been sleeping in your car, but you’re so polite when you step outside, they’ve let it slide so far. You tried once again to find the house that you once knew, but streets seem rearranged. The names have changed and it’s not coming back to you.

your name
I took a train as far west as I could pay, and ended in this gray industrial town. The people here are silent and worn down. They see right through me, so I keep my eyes on the ground. I woke up to sirens again. Out here, they don’t sound the same. The motel television played a movie where they kept saying your name.

where i’m headed
I drive out each night to see the city sky get bright, because someday, I’m afraid, I’ll forget it. The people outside are saying every line like one day they might live to regret it. I tried to catch up the strain of the murmuring refrain that seeped out from the streets, where it was embedded. Under the fluorescent sky, another wayward, errant sigh was etched into the walls, where nobody read it. You hold on so tight when you lay down at night, as the traffic outside sweeps your room with its lights, because the sunrise, when it hits your eyes, could burn out all those dreams, if you let it.