Tropic Of Cancer

The tropic of the cancer

In every solitary dancer

Is a line dividing dream

From hard devotion

Residing in the heart

It stands destiny apart

From all decision

Though we stumble

Through the motion

The country that we live in

And all the names we have given

A sky called blue and a love

That speaks in English

Stretched out between the poles

All of this territory rolls

The great blind empty

Between the mind

And whatever love is

Love is

A ring around a rose

The only dance the compass knows

Trains the needle on a thing we cannot find

A rose by any other

Name a thing and soon discover

The finest pin will never hold a butterfly

The heart as it relaxes

Undressed upon it's axis

Like a plain girl

With all the paint rubbed off

It whispers to our bones

That we are everyone alone

Of the word and by the word again forsaken

And still my restless tongue

Caring nothing for the sum

Begins the calculus of hope and intuition

A ring around a rose

The only dance the compass knows

Trains the needle on the thing we cannot find

In the hothouse of our passion

So much striving and so much fashion

When God alone will call a rose a rose

God alone will call a rose a rose

God alone will call a rose a rose