All last night the wind was howling
through the asylum behind our wall.
It’s halls are lightless, its rooms abandoned.
I think it’s time that we forgot about it all.
You know I did my time up there.
I played a lot of solitaire.
And while my doctor combed his hair
I read all of his cards. Horrible,
but it returns you to your childhood.
Not the girl who brings the firewood
but the one that burns it.
‘Cuz when it catches, her hands start shaking.
There is a prayer we use to keep them still
but she never learns it.
My little daughter’s eyes eclipse.
She only speaks with the corners of her lips.
She’s already burned, wretched little clown,
slamming doors in the attic while the sun’s going down.

You’ve plucked the wrong thorn, robin,
ain’t no deliverance, I fear,
only sustained temptation:
Lord, deliver us!

All last night the wind was wailing
through the asylum upon the hill.
For half a lifetime now it’s stood there empty.
The healing touch is just a little pinch I feel inside a pill.
You want to keep the poor folks straight,
underpaid and working late,
then preempt their demands:
take their feelings in hand.

I have no summer, I feel no winter,
I get no honest-to-god sleep, and no wide-eyed waking,
but it’s not the shell shock of all that acid
that pursues my senses when my hands start shaking–
and isn’t it an easy ruse to fill your eyes with breaking news
and to simply refuse what you sense is there but you cannot use?

You’ve plucked the wrong thorn, robin,
ain’t no deliverance, I fear,
only sustained temptation:
Lord, deliver us!
You’ve got the wrong thorn, robin,
ain’t no deliverance, I fear,
only this fierce temptation:
Lord, deliver us!

Bill is hungry and she’s still up there slamming that door
and Bill is livid, he’s terrified. Says
“she don’t know her own father now, she just keeps shrieking.
The floor is soaking. Her eyes are wide.”
Well, Bill is fishy just like me.
He’s hung upon that bloody tree, but he’s always looking West.
You want to see inside the crow?
Take a break from what you know, don’t go auguring all
“black murder!”

Have some dinner, Bill, she’ll be all right.