Black bitter milk we drink in toast to the dawn In huddled silence as a long night falls We write of love upon the bodies of our dead Swallow pride and venom for our daily bread Duende
Wash your conscience in the tears of men who rape Trace your pleasures in the outlines of pain You speak of laws and rights in this day and age? I don't believe in anything I can't taste Duende
And tonight the losers sleep, or lie awake and gnaw their wrists Crippled dancers, beaten heroes, squandered artists Refugees from those wretched lands Where our dreams died like lovers in our hands While outside in that new age Lost children and devils play On the very doorsteps of our homes New deities sworn in Consuming from without and from within Clean the land down to bare and blackened bones Make ready ten billion beds in hell For we're all coming soon
And in this noise, the dreadful silence of tongues Tied by words never spoken, songs left unsung Vows that were bent rather than broken Locked chambers that will never open And none on this earth will ever get what they want And that is beautiful, or close enough And we'll clutch our regrets Shut out the rest Cut out the hearts from our chests And we move Eyes shut, silent, hand in hand Towards a broken promised land
When those before you lost their heads upon the block Or sold themselves into the services of the Snakes as new gods Reshape the world in their own image And all the others turn their eyes away We will set out with a fire in our hearts With a desire that cannot be bought To snatch the morning from the jaws of the night To take the dead and bring them back to life Duende
From childhood schemes on stranger's floors To sickbeds, cells And foreign shores Homeless Heartless Restless Selfless Lifeless Loveless Less and Less and Less
And if the morning comes late this time That fickle sun will rise to find My fingers clutched tight around the husks Of dreams I built from dust Finally dead Dead in the land of the dead And they will call it suicide As I scream for just one finger of dawn And it's coming On all horizons, like gathering clouds Bar the doors to shut it out But put your ear to your chest You will hear In your own breast Hoof beats Closing in
And there's nothing pure in this place And there's nothing clean in this place And there's nothing sure in this place And there's nothing free in this place And in this world there's nothing safe And in this world there's nothing fair And nothing in this world is true This world that I can't bear And the morning came late
I'll spit it back in your face Last-born of an evil race We're all evil in this place