Mermaid Avenue-Vol Ii

Billy Bragg Mermaid Avenue-Vol Ii Album

7.Remember The Mountain Bed

Do you still sing of the mountain bed we made of limbs and
leaves:
Do you still sigh there near the sky where the holly berry
bleeds:
You laughed as i covered you over with leaves, face, breast,
hips and thighs,
You smiled when i said the leaves were just the color of your
eyes.

Rosin smells and turpentine smells from eucalyptus and pine
Bitter tastes of twigs we chewed where tangled woodvines twine
Trees held us in on all four sides so thick we could not see
I could not see any wrong in you, and you saw none in me.

Your arm was brown against the ground, your cheeks part of the
sky,
As your fingers played with grassy moss, and limber did you lie:
Your stomach moved beneath your shirt and your knees were in the
air
Your feet played games with mountain roots as you lay thinking
there.

Below us the trees grew clumps of trees, raised families of
trees, and they
As proud as we tossed their heads in the wind and flung good
seeds away:
The sun was hot and the sun was bright down in the valley below
Where people starved and hungry for life so empty come and go.

There in the shade and hid from the sun we freed our minds and
learned
Our greatest reason for being here, our bodies moved and burned
There on our mountain bed of leaves we learned life's reason why
The people laugh and love and dream, they fight, they hate to
die.

The smell of your hair i know is still there, if most of our
leaves are blown,
Our words still ring in the brush and the trees where singing
seeds are sown
Your shape and form is dim, but plain, there on our mountain bed
I see my life was brightest where you laughed and laid your
head...

I learned the reason why man must work and how to dream big
dreams,
To conquer time and space and fight the rivers and the seas
I stand here filled with my emptiness now and look at city and
land
And i know why farms and cities are built by hot, warm, nervous
hands.

I crossed many states just to stand here now, my face all hot
with tears,
I crossed city, and valley, desert, and stream, to bring my body
here:
My history and future blaze bright in me and all my joy and pain
Go through my head on our mountain bed where i smell your hair
again.

All this day long i linger here and on in through the night
My greeds, desires, my cravings, hopes, my dreams inside me
fight:
My loneliness healed, my emptiness filled, i walk above all pain
Back to the breasts of my woman and child to scatter my seeds
again.

Words: woody guthrie (1944) -
Music: jeff tweedy/jay bennett (1999)

Leroy bach: piano
Jay bennett: organ, nylon-string guitar, backing vocal
Ken coomer: drums
John stirratt: bass, backing vocal
Jeff tweedy: vocal, acoustic guitar