Here sits a once good gardener
Pale as a shadow of a doubt
Once a happy dweller of a garden good
Once a sleepy sinner, once cast out
To the sea where the crossy eyed maids
Murmur low do you see, do you see
Where the doubts cross his shadow
Drowned and amoral, I pollinate the coral
And reek of the deep
Where I've tended the water weed
I was once your good gardener
Sing to bring on spring
I know where your good grass grows
I know what your boyfriend knows
I was your good gardener
I saw twilight car waxers, corpulent dog walkers
Clean canny couples on the sunset strip
From a tower forty miles to the east of Augusta
Saw a plague on the Indian a'coming on a wind ship
You were in the garden when the wind swept up
And took the foul words from your mouth
Now you know what your sarcasm really really means
It's the tearing with your teeth of the flesh
From the bones of your brother
Kill the shrub to fertilize the flower
Did I hear you saying that the form doesn't matter
Well form into matter, the matter is forever
But only in a good garden
Black rock bound in the Brighton bowl
Where the seas of desolation roll
Where you're borne and borne and borne in again
To the pebble feather shore of forgotten friends
Think how you can't see the science
Without seeing first the self
But then nobody thinks
Of growing somebody else
And how the sun, hungry sun
Holds the withered, withered world
So why shouldn't I kiss
The beautiful girl?
When I was her good gardener
Sing of the summer sham
O, see them grow tall, see them in their rot
See them go to seed in the cemetery plot
I was your good gardener
Sing to bring on spring
O, ice of winter would crackle
And splinter with my love in everything
Ice of Winter would crackle
And splinter with my love in everything
I was your good gardener
The sea is stark and lovely
And it scares me to the point of rapture
I was your good gardener
Of some good stature
The sea is stark and lovely
And it scares me to the point of rapture
I was your good gardener
Now I can barely look at ya