The rain falls with a soft and determined cruelty

A tiny hammer on a nail, in a box I'm growing used to

I sit here in the dusk, the shadows they stretch long

Like the fingers of the night, playing a forgotten song

And I grind my thoughts, between the stones of memory and dread

Till the living ideas are just ashes on the bed

Just a fine, grey dust where something beautiful once grew

I see it in their eyes, the old dark flower blooms

Pushing up through cracked pavements, in our living rooms

A brutal poetry sprayed upon the wall

The chosen silence that precedes the fall

It's the harvest of the cold machine, the gospel of the sale

Leaving hollow men, a fleet and a frail

Ready for the hard, simple music of the fascist drum

And I am too old now to believe in hope

We have learned nothing from our mistakes, after all

Just a pendulum swinging on a fraying rope

Waiting for the shadow of the axe to fall

I am too old now to believe in hope

I feel like a man in a cell at dawn

Listening for the crunch of boots upon the lawn

The world outside my window is a painted stage

For my own final act of impotent rage

My family, my republic, lies fractured in the cold

The story that we shared is finished and is told

Love has packed its bags and left this house of wind

Every empire's end is written in its own beginning

A language written in the blood we refuse to stop spinning

From the argument, the fist, to the shattered windowpane

To the march, the war, the mass grave in the rain

A story told a thousand times, a plague upon us sent

And I am just a witness, too tired to repent

'Cause I am too old now to believe in hope

We have learned nothing from our mistakes, after all

Just a pendulum swinging on a fraying rope

Waiting for the shadow of the axe to fall

I am too old now to believe in hope

I watch a car pass, hissing on the wet street

Someone in a warm room, in a warm, forgetting sleep

I am not certain I want to see another sun

This weary weight of knowing, this race I haven't won

The thought returns, not a scream, just a sigh

A low and worn-out sound, as the well runs dry

I am too old now

Too old

We have learned nothing

Nothing at all

The bones of the evening, scattered by the wind