Lyrics From a Balance Beam - Bright Eyes

From a Balance Beam

There is a man holding a megaphone
He must have been the voice of God
The bystanders claimed they saw angels
Flying up and down the block
They must have been attached to wires
I saw one laying in the lawn with a broken arm
So I called 911
Well that’s one less founded opinion
One more cause for a dispute
So the street filled, like a basin
Up with cameras and their crews
And they washed away the rumors
Leaving just the concrete truth
It was a spectacle
No, I mean a miracle
So then I fell like that girl from a balance beam
A gymnasium of eyes were all holding on to me
I lifted one foot to cross the other
And I felt myself slipping
It was a small mistake
Sometimes that is all it takes
Now I’m staring at my wrist
Hoping that the timing is right
When the planets will align
There will be no planets to align
Just the carcass of the sun
And those little painted marbles
Spinning senseless through an endless black sky
(and so it never started
And it will never stop
Just like I am and you are)
It was in a foreign hotel’s bathtub
I baptized myself in change
And one by one I drowned all of the people I had been
I emerged to find the parallels were fewer
I was cleansed
I looked in the mirror
And someone new was there
Still, I was as helpless as a chess piece
When I was lifted up by someone’s hand
And delivered from the corner my enemies had got me in
But in all of my salvation
I still felt imprisonment
Inside that holding cell that is myself
So I wait for the day when I’ll hear the key
As it turns in the lock
And the guard will say to me
«Oh my patient prisoner you have waited for this day
And finally you are free!
You are free!
You are freezing.»
Now I’m staring at the sun
Waiting for it to explode
Because a day is gonna come
Don’t know when but it will come
And then we will finally know the way out of here
And I will throw away this wrinkled map
And my chart of stars and compass, cracked
And I’ll climb out that tree
All wet with sap to avoid the hungry beasts below
I’ll cut out my lover’s tongue and sing
Of a graveyard gray and a garden green
And we won’t have to worry no more
No we won’t have to wonder again about
How this song or story ends
About how this song and story will end