Stephen Fearing - The Bells of Morning lyrics

Tonight I am speechless My head is filled with pouring rain As the darkness falls on Montreal When violence is shrieking The city streets will run with pain Until the moon can shed no light at all And I believe that we have fallen In the middle of an old highway And the past is rolling over us As men begin to understand What women say They see history reaching out to smother all of us So ring the bells of morning For sorrow and for shame And let the deep well inside each of us Swell with outrage And those of us who know What went before can come again Must ring the bells We must ring the bells of morning. I met a man once He held himself tighter than a fist He was hard and fast in his inflexibility He was threatened by the future A product of the past He was terrified by his own femininity We must ring the bells of morning We have everything to gain And may those of us who comprehend Commit our lives to change And though you swear You can't let yourself be vulnerable again Ring the bells The bells of morning For if we can't face ourselves We will never understand We can learn to make a cradle With these stubborn hands And we will hear the echo From this shattered land When we ring the bells of morning I met a woman once She told me we might never see the day When the violence was overcome She said silence is the fuel Fear and ignorance the roaring flames That burn the freedom out of everyone She said ring the bells of morning And let none of us pretend For if you walk the path of silence You might never reach the end And those of us who know what went before can come again Must ring the bells, the bells of morning Oh ring the bells of morning Ring them loud and ring them long Let the mother tongue of strength Be the peaceful language of this song And let those ancient voices lead us all into the dawn Ring the bells, the bells of morning Ring the bells, the bells of morning Ring the bells, we must ring the bells of morning