Circle of Lorca

Frank Stanford

When you take the lost road

You come to the snow

And when you find the snow

You get down on your hands and knees

Like a sick dog

That’s been eating the grasses of graveyards

For twenty centuries.

When you take the lost road

You find woman

Who has no fear of light

Who can kill two cocks at once

Light which has no fear of cocks

And cocks who can’t call in the snow.

You find lovers who’ve been listening

For the same roosters to sing

For twenty centuries

Roosters that have swallowed stones

Out of each other’s tracks

But have never met

Anywhere on the road.

When you take the lost road

You find the bright feathers of morning

Laid out in proportion to snow and light

And when the snow gets lost on the road

Then the hot wind might blow from the south

And there is sadness in bed for twenty centuries

And everyone is chewing the grass on the graves again.

When you get lost

You come to the moon in the field

The light all lovers soil

The sheet no one leaves clean

The light cocks are afraid to cross

The same moon woman danced under

For twenty centuries

With blood on her face.

When you get lost on the road

You run into the dead

Who have broken down stones

In their throats for twenty centuries

I saw two little crazy boys crying

Because it was morning

And when morning comes it comes

In the morning and never at night.

I saw two security police taking out a man’s balls

And I saw two little crazy boys

Crying by the road who wouldn’t go away

But two has never been a number

Because it’s only legal to pass one at a time

It’s only a drum you can carry but you can’t beat

It’s the evidence they need to make you disappear.