I remember the day of the Tennessee flood The sound of the scream and the sight of the blood My son he saw as the animal died In the jaws of the dog as the river ran by I said, "Come back soon" It was there on the page of the book that I read The boy grew up and the yearling was dead He stood at the gate with the angel on guard And wept to the d**h of his little boy heart I said, "Come back soon" Come back soon We wake in the night in the womb of the world We beat our fists on the door We cannot breathe in the sea that swirls So we groan in this great darkness For deliverance Deliverance, o Lord So I sit on the bench at the bend in the trail And I can feel in the fall the final exhale The trees of the field all wring their hands And the leaves go by like a funeral band
I say, "Come back soon" Come back soon We wake in the night in the womb of the world We beat our fists on the door We cannot breathe in this sea that swirls So we groan in this great darkness Are we alone in this great darkness? If nature's red in tooth and in claw Seems to me that she's an outlaw 'Cause every d**h is a question mark At the end of the book of a beating heart And the answer's scrawled on the silent dark In the dome of the sky in a billion stars But we cannot read these angel tongues We cannot stare at the burning sun And we cannot breathe with these broken lungs So we kick in the womb and we beg to be born Deliverance! Oh, deliverance, o Lord! Deliverance! Oh, deliverance, o Lord!