Gabriel Kahane - Parts of Speech lyrics

They sit on steps against the wind The colors changing growing thin In lights and lye and lost illusions Watch these two discussing What to make of Unborn children who may take or not take Let us not break Their cups are cold their hands are black They sit at angles but Distraction will not find them it will find them In a white room Where it's all just touching shells It's touching shells But It's just nothing It's just nothing He would never know If she had never told Him that she'd like to be a kind of mother Now he's on his own A drift of sallow bone And nothing there to lift him from the shudder Your first love teaches you the parts of speech All the words that you never thought that you could reach The shop and the bulletproof chinese The yellow billboard yellow frieze Of last year's summer flicks And soon the bus of nations hits It's blinking in the breeze Of afternoons and afternoons Of yawning And he's longing And though he's certain that the shudder's tied to fall His throat is tight can't quite recall It's in the books or in the wall That scene of children standing tall? He clears his throat He clears it He's got a place in some small town Far from the garden and the gown She wears for someone else While someone else Will hold her hand In some cold off-white room But he's okay And you're okay And we're okay We break the fall But he's okay And you're okay And we're okay It's nothing it all