The Waning of the Sun

Strange light, evensong, river gums paint on the glassy Murray
We've been smoking and the silty dust straps our feet, bare as a baby
If this day was the last, I’d have been happier than I ever thought I'd be
And I'll suspend all that needs to be tended to, to watch the waning sun of January

How I wish I could live in my hindsight, safe in the prism of the past
I was melancholic even as a child, I would yearn for days older, to feel tugs on lines already cast
I feel it in my throat, that’s where my sadness sleeps and grows when I let it
It makes it hard to swallow without tears pushing, under the waning sun of January

My ancestors werе always songs in my neck
Northerners and Irish, thе cold and the coal
They waited in me ‘til I was quiet enough
They sang together until their sadness was still
I am their keeper of their best and their worst
They flow through me, all their songs and their thirsts
All that they gave me, all of my choices
My head's full of a choir of a thousand voices