Will Oldham

More Brother Rides

Mention of the stars reduce us back,
They, about them, have time's things hanging;
We are around near the railroad track
Checking out the thundering.
Names you call could have been ours
To call and live among them;
Friends come by and spend some hours
And then back down to working...

At night, things come and half a life,
Not so silly walking,
All different clothes in the half light
And a halting way of talking.
There really was one way to be,
Yet this is not it, we think,
To be such younger folk as we
Not levelled as we drink

We're busted up, so ragged down
And kissing and subsisting;
Our eyes glint wild and roll around
And the dog, he whines insisting,
He asks that we allow the sex
To make us unrecognizable;
That we allow slow violence
To prove us rebaptizable.