Guy Clark - The Randall Knife lyrics

My father had a Randall knife My mother gave it to him When he went off to WWII To save us all from ruin If you've ever held a Randall knife Then you know my father well If a better blade was ever made It was probably forged in hell My father was a good man A lawyer by his trade And only once did I ever see Him misuse the blade It almost cut his thumb off When he took it for a tool The knife was made for darker things And you could not bend the rules He let me take it camping once On a Boy Scout jamboree And I broke a half an inch off Trying to stick it in a tree I hid it from him for a while But the knife and he were one He put it in his bottom drawer Without a hard word one There it slept and there it stayed For twenty some odd years Sort of like Excalibur Except waiting for a tear My father died when I was forty And I couldn't find a way to cry Not because I didn't love him Not because he didn't try I'd cried for every lesser thing Whiskey, pain and beauty But he deserved a better tear And I was not quite ready So we took his ashed out to sea And poured 'em off the stern And threw the roses in the wake Of everything we'd learned When we got back to the house They asked me what I wanted Not the lawbooks not the watch I need the things he's haunted My hand burned for the Randall knife There in the bottom drawer And I found a tear for my father's life And all that it stood for