The Tears Of Things

There's no start to this story

And I can see no end

To young men hearing voices

Whisper in the wind

I woke up made of marble

A shepherd boy in shock

Michelangelo release me

From a single block

I'm David the giant killer

With heart-shaped eyes

I was naked as a soldier

Far from my mother's cries and

The tears of things

The tears of things

Rising like a flood

The tears of things

The tears of things

I'd cry them if I could

Was it you, Lord, I was listening to?

You didn't say much

You said "Let my fingers form you,

Be fashioned by my touch,

Be open to be broken

As every heart that sings,

No voice and drum can overcome

A symphony of strings"

You said "You'd make of me an instrument

For melody and word"

I wonder as things fall asunder

Was it really you I heard or

The tears of things?

The tears of things

Songs made out of rain

The tears of things

The tears of things

Here we go again

Mussolini came to see me

A shadow by his side

Church bells ring, a vanishing

Then the vanishing denied

Six million voices silenced in just four years

The silent song of Christendom

So loud everybody hears

Before the roar, before the blast

The stench and shame

There's a howling, wailing sound

That screams your name

I'm David not Goliath, I was born in Bethlehem

And there is no us if there is no them

My eyes were burned from all I learned

There were things I can't unsee

In this your holy war

There's nothing holy here for me just

The tears of things

The tears of things

Rising like a flood

The tears of things

The tears of things

I'd cry them if I could

If you put a man into a cage and rattle it enough

A man becomes the kind of rage that cannot be locked up

No, it cannot be locked up

No, it cannot be locked up

Dear God you made us so you wouldn't be alone

Every heart is exiled until a heart gets home

Don't send us back to stone

Don't send us back to stone

I was made for worship before I spoke I sang

Songs of grief, of disbelief

How a woman can love a man

The naked song, the sacred song

That every soldier fears

'Cause when people go around talking to God

It always ends in tears

Yeah, the tears of things

The tears of things

Let the desert be unfrozen

The tears of things

The river sings

Who would choose to be chosen?

River, sea and mountain

Desert, dust and snow

Everybody is my people

Let my people go

Michelangelo's David (1504)

Appearing daily in the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, Italy