Will Yip - Mexican War Streets lyrics

Though by the path I lead The pa**ing of time and the pouring of tea Are all I've lately seen O my soul {SH 159} Until the temporal bridge be burned Until our anchor stocks hold firm Where the hands of clocks don't turn O my soul May our lips remain discreet While your traps are beneath our feet-- But how long before our tails are caught By our "free" thought? Sugar in the cane, candles low Kettle on the flame for the teapot? No I tremble at the thought Sugar in the cane, candles low Southside Flats where the upscale go I tremble at the thought! On the Streets of Mexican Wars I battle with the memory of a first fight In our contemptible youth I quoted White Nights "My God, a moment of bliss Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetimes?" --F. Dostoevsky Thinking that'd get rid of you And waited with a stone in my hand But you were quite right: Nature had another plan (& failed to run it by me) Nature had another plan Some other surrogate self To live in the sediment of so many somebody elses' Innumerable lives and you were right: It's not a person who dies But worlds die inside us --Y. Yevtushenko Sugar in the cane and the candles are low On the West End Bridge looking down at the Ohio River I tremble at the thought of what's often referred to as 'karma.' The sugar and the candles are gone You panic like a mouse when the lights go on (I ADMIT, IT WARMS MY HEART TO WATCH YOUR WORLD FALL APART) The colorful hills talked me down from the bridge: To heck with all the d** my parents did I'd like to meet whoever said the words we print in red With a coin in my teeth on the Mexican War Streets Rivers of sadness and mutual need In the loud desperation of social routine The rock of salvation, lightly esteemed (-Deut. 32:15) And distance surging like oceans between us Suspended by strings Over rotating wheels Via magnets and springs Of Carnegie steel With 'representation' our fashionable theme And unfathomably powerful forces Like oceans between us We have all the signs we need Do we decide not to read? "My will: his will that fronts me Seas between." (-James Joyce) And those who precede: the relation between Is listening beside me At night like some seismic machine While the mental vibrations of petrified men Are etched in translation by pendulum pens And the movements of underground plates Do nothing to bridge or exacerbate Oceans between us