Tortoises All The Way Down Lyrics

Watchmen w/ their eyes closed, ransom and a scripture by the picture of your face
Messages the rhymes chose, blueprint for contrition in a cigarette case

Everybody knows, son
Everybody knows what you’ve done
Everybody knows, son
Everybody knows exactly what you’ve done

Charles was alive then, towering like a mountain at the silver trumpet blast
William still alive till when our altars are all emptied of his offerings to the last

Everybody knows, son
Everybody knows just what you’ve done
Everybody knows, son
And so again it goes you can’t end what you’ve begun

Surely as the sun early on the east side comes
Before my sleepless eyes your features metamorphosize
Surely as the sun early on the east side comes
If only you had known how soon you’d be on your own
How suddenly they’d cast the stone


When the mouths of praise and blame start to sound the same
And you’ve asked they please not come back around
& yet they happen by, you can offer my reply:
“there’s tortoises all the way down.”

Since the night you came dressed up in your righteous name
All you claim to see doesn’t mean a thing to me
Surely as the sun early on the east side comes
I know I’m not the only one

Whose blindfold-and-a-scale-ship refused to sail
And yet failed since each search for solid ground
You sing to me at night as the moving finger writes
On tortoises all the way down
You think that glass of wine could cancel half a line?
But it won’t wash our words out this time
& I’m not the only one who’s got nowhere to run

Cause everybody knows, son
Everybody knows just what you’ve done
Everybody knows, son
Everybody knows what you’ve done

While all hiding inside our painting-of-a-house-hung-up-inside- that same-painted-house-which-ever-implies-another-painted-house-inside lives
Serpent-in-the-sky-lives!
Servants-of-the-least-high!
Most-tortoiseless lives!
Would you meet me sometime soon, son, down by the riverside?
There’s room enough in my paradise
My empty little mind