Lyrics
Tears on the Gallows
Once he glared with apathy’s orbs,
Until his time had reared;
Now he faces the desolate path—
A lurid fate doth leer.
His tears fall on the gallows,
And Sorrow spurns his steps,
Of punishment in following
His own apostate way.
Tears on the gallows
His chains rattle foreign tongues,
The wind buffets his soul,
As though from the Fallen One’s
Wings in Cocytus’s icy hole.
Hoisted like a paltry thing,
He sobs under the crosspiece loop.
Then dropped—like Icarus
From the sun-beaten sky.
My eyes absorb his shifting face:
Brutus; Cassius; Judas Iscariot.
Tears on the gallows
The aesthetics of life
Are brought out by death.
If days are made of hanged men,
A noose is worn around mine.
And if nights bring atheists from the sky,
Then my end is surely nigh.
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