The roses of the garden where but an illusion,
the looking glass was filled with a dead man's dream,
Of flying bullets and a blazing gun,
Our blood was washing down a carbon stream.
I see these visions of another time,
Filling my head with the school-bell chime,
And so the white doves came,
And took me on their shoulders,
And when the night was tame,
The world did seem so much colder.
The sun shone thru the trees,
That's all I could see,
Was the weight of the world,
On the back of a boy,
And his busy brain swirled,
Like a broken Christmas toy.
And so the leaves fell in golden grace,
And my tears swelled in sweet embrace,
The death of a father,
And the sin of a lover,
Seemed to me to be a bother,
And so I ducked for cover.
Behind the pickup truck,
Beneath the carpenter's chair,
Two girls tempted lady-luck,
And the brothers stopped by the village fair.
Until the leaves fall gray,
And the sister-wives see the light,
Cry little boy who can't stop to play,
Beyond the simple town,
Where the Greensleeves start to fight,
And the masses to pray.