Leonard Cohen - For Wilf and his House lyrics

When young the Christians told me how we pinned Jesus like a lovely bu*terfly against the wood, and I wept beside paintings of Calvary at velvet wounds and delicate twisted feet. But he could not hang softly long, your fighters so proud with bugles, bending flowers with their silver stain, and when I faced the Ark for counting, trembling under the burning oil, the meadow of running flesh turned sour and I kissed away my gentle teachers, warned my younger brothers. Among the young and turning-great of the large nations, innocent of the spiked wish and the bright crusade, there I could sing my heathen tears between the summersaults and chestnut battles, love the distant saint who fed his arm to flies, mourn the crushed ant and despise the reason of the heel. Raging and weeping are left on the early road. Now each in his holy hill the glittering and hurting days are almost done. Then let us compare mythologies. I have learned my elaborate lie of soaring crosses and poisoned thorns and how my fathers nailed him like a bat against a barn to greet the autumn and late hungry ravens as a hollow yellow sign.