Guy Clark - 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