Walking through the cemetery where your father’s buried
and the elder leaves are falling at your feet.
Soaking up the history, the dry and subtle mystery
of feeling other men beneath your feet.
Babies may be crying, in the distance ladies dying,
but you ain’t nobody’s daddy right now.
Overhead a star’s in sight, the first one of the coming night;
it seems to irritate you somehow.
And it’s a long way home walking home with your books in the fall,
never picking up the phone never thinking of nobody to call.
And you feel like a man walking away from everything that is small,
but if you’re not making love to me you’ll never make it at all.
Now you’re in your library, you’re fingering a newspaper
you like to think you’re touching history.
The dry and dusty feel of things that can’t be touched and can’t be changed
cannot impose on your for anything.
Once upon a time, you could imagine other worlds,
but you don’t want to be a daddy right now.
The checkerboard, the flaming sword, the wounded and the newly born,
the armor and the blood upon the ground.
And it’s a long way home walking home with your books in the fall,
never picking up the phone never thinking of nobody to call.
And you feel like a man walking away from everything that is small,
but if you’re not making love to me you’ll never make it at all.
Now you’re at the barber shop, the silver hair upon you
will be shortened with the others right now.
You cross your hands and wonder if there’s something you’ve forgotten,
but there’s nothing coming to you right now.
The blood inside your arteries, the fibers of your muscles
can do nothing but resent you right now.
The babies and the ladies and the stars begin to hate you,
cause you ain’t nobody’s daddy right now.
And it’s a long way home walking home with your books in the fall,
never picking up the phone never thinking of nobody to call.
And you feel like a man walking away from everything that is small,
but if you’re not making love to me you’ll never make it at all.