Lyrics Natalie Merchant

Natalie Merchant

Thick as Thieves

Remember how it all began

The apple and the fall of man

The price we paid

So the people say

Down a path of shame it lead us

Dared to bite the hand that fed us

The fairy tale

The moral end

The wheel of fortune

Never turns again

The worst of it has come and gone

In the chaos of millennium

In the falling out of the doomsday crowd

Their last retreat is moving slow

They burn their bridges as they go

The heretic is beatified

He'll teach the harlot's child to smile

Wracked again by indecision

Should we make that small incision

Testify to the bleeding heart inside?

We cut, we scratched

We rent, we slashed

And when he opened up at last

Found a cul-de-sac

Deep and black

Of smoke and ash

The wicked king of parody

Is kissing all his enemies

On the seventh day

Of the seventh week

The tyrant's voice is softer now

But just for one forgiving hour

Before the rise of his

Iron fist again

I've come tonight

I've come to know

The way we are

The way we'll go

Come to measure this

The width of the wide abyss

I come to you in restless sleep

Where all your dreams turn bitter-sweet

With voodoo doll philosophies

And day-glo holy trinities

The crooked raft that leaves the shore

Ferries drunken souls aboard

Pilgrims march to Compestela

Visions of their saint in yellow

All follow deep in trance

Lost in a catatonic dance

Know no future

Damn the past

Blind, warm, ecstatic

Safe at last...