Set The Fire To The Third Bar

featuring Martha Wainwright

I find the map and draw a straight line

Over rivers, farms, and state lines

The distance from here to where you’d be

It’s only finger-lengths that I see

I touch the place where I’d find your face

My finger in creases of distant dark places

I hang my coat up in the first bar

There is no peace that I’ve found so far

The laughter penetrates my silence

As drunken men find flaws in science

Their words mostly noises

Ghosts with just voices

Your words in my memory

Are like music to me

I’m miles from where you are,

I lay down on the cold ground

I, I pray that something picks me up

And sets me down in your warm arms

After I have travelled so far

We’d set the fire to the third bar

We’d share each other like an island

Until exhausted, close our eyelids

And dreaming, pick up from

The last place we left off

Your soft skin is weeping

A joy you can’t keep in

I’m miles from where you are,

I lay down on the cold ground

And I, I pray that something picks me up

and sets me down in your warm arms

And miles from where you are,

I lay down on the cold ground

and I, I pray that something picks me up

and sets me down in your warm arms

END