Emmy the Great Album

Is all that we've become,
Just nothing but hats and bags
We're waiting for taxi cabs
So you light cigarettes
And i'm taking drags

In the air, a sea of words,
That didn't come soon enough
In my mind a railway station
And a ticket stub

And it is easter in the town
I can hear as they strike off the bell
We're listening to some old man
Say he came back to life with a hole in his hand

And now the sunday school is gathered Together in pink and in blue
They're heralding angels for you
But not for me

They're singing
Gloria in excelsis
Deo deo

Gloria in excelsis
But there's no,
There's no hope

And i am grateful for the things
That you've tried to show to me dear
But there no arcadia
No alby and theres no jerusalem here

And underneath your pastures green
There's earth and there ash
And theres bone
And there are things that dissapear
Into it and then they are gone

And there is light that hits the sky
And then it is midnight again
And there is my mother, my father,
And you and we are all impermanent

And on the green they tell their tales About how even the dead can come back
I just dont believe in that

So you can keep on singing

Gloria in exclelsis
Deo deo

Gloria in excelsis
But there's no,
There's no hope

There's no such thing (x7)
There's no such thing as ghosts

The city called me so I came
It isn't mine to question what it said
I sleep until the point when I'm awake
I walk until there's nothing left to trek
And everyone is looking for an answer
And everyone is waiting for a break
I came and I was bored of it soon after
But I had nowhere to go and so I stayed
I dreamed a lifetime of this place
It seemed an awful thing to waste
Well the morning fills my mouth up with decay
I like it, it reminds me how you taste
Sometimes I feel you rising up behind me like the wind
But I still try to look away
What will you look like when you're old?
(What will you look like when you're old?)
What will I do if I don't know you?
(What will I do if I don't know you?)
I guess that I decided not to ask the day I took the road
Down to the city as it called
Sun making silhouettes of gauze
I don't remember you at all
The city called me and I came
It isn't mine to question why
Sometimes the clouds will rise ahead, I hear your name
It's like a choir in the sky
What will you look like when you're old?
(What will you look like when you're old?)
What will I do if I don't know you?
(What will I do if I don't know you?)
I guess that I decided not to know the day I took the road
Down to the city as it called
Sun making silhouettes of gauze
I don't remember you at all
They pulled a human from my waist
It had your mouth, it had your face
I would have kept it if I'd stayed.

December came faster than most
And before we knew it, it was cold
And you turned to me
As if to say that we should not have come this way
You didn't ask a question, so I had no reply
And we came upon a congregation
And we turned our faces to the constellation
Singing “we are both believers now”
But still there was no voice in the clouds
You see, the stars are not our conscience
They are just another light in our eyes
In our eyes
They are just another light keeping us blind
Long time I have left Umeah
Long time travelled in your company
But I see the road before us split
And I know that I should follow it
But I know that I will find you
When the morning spreads it's breath across the night
Find you
In the morning at the end of my life
December's roads are long and they're tough
And sometimes I get really tired and stuck
But I keep the thought that when I die
They will carry me and lay me by your side
They will carry me and lay me by your side
And there amongst the dirt
At last our roads again will merge

Aiko, geography has got the better of us again
I know you've gotta go
And I am to be singing
To the tail of an aeroplane

So I fold these pieces of gold
Into animals so I can fashion a chain
That will bridge the gap across these continents

Aiko, your fatherless smile has been summoned to other shores
There is a man over there with a gentleman's bow
Who invites you to take to the floor

Pack your travelling case
With your ribbons and lace
For his blood must be furnished with excellent taste
But it might burn a hole into your paper face

Oh so you run towards the things you haven't got
Just to say goodbye again
But do you think of me as he unlocks your knees
In the Terrace Garden?

Pretty pictures in the window blinds:
The canal – it looks good with the winter behind,
Like it is played on a banjo to a Tennessee line
And the reeds are like cowboys in perfect alignment.

Does the sky over Tokyo know
How a river can flow like the stroke
Of a violin bow –
Like a hand will run across a milky spine.

Oh but you take these trees
And this summer breeze
On this stupid-looking day,
And you can send it all to the Japanese
Now my love is gone away.

(Japanese verse)

And if you see Aiko
Or Sai
Let her know
That she dances in my dreams.