Lyrics Forty Days and Nights - David Knopfler

Forty Days and Nights

The wind is weeping voices and they fill my tattooed sails
Maybe God in grace rejoices as another sinner fails
She says «You talk like every crazy, transfixed by The Northern Lights
There’s a movie a-running round your head, call it 'Forty Days and Nights'»
For forty days and forty nights in the belly of my whale
I was handcuffed high on my own denial and a blacklist of betrayals
I have bowed my head in silence, nailed inside «Belief»
Crucified by certainties and righteous burning grief
I have travelled with the holy, the worldly and the wise
Baby maybe we were closer then than we ever realised
For forty days and forty nights I wrestled here with my appetites
Pressed up against your pearly gates with such promise of delights
But for all these vows to heaven, how many change their ways?
And I would sooner tremble in your eyes than feel nothing in your gaze
If I rejected all ambition — If I resigned the two bit parts
If the price was true perdition — Man I knew that from the start
I have done with helpless feelings and I have climbed your callous walls
Where catcalls, jeers and beatings break these bartered, broken souls
Where shadows vault the ceilings at the vivisection ball
When the wings of death come a- beating fast across these martyr’s halls
I’m still living with my conscience still celebrating Art
'Til I Reach the last confinement at The Home of Exiled Hearts
The King and Queen of Laughter — they got no place left to go
And they will play out their final chapter here on death row radio
Where with the angels of the city as the guilty stars burn out
My Samurai are sleeping light in Tinseltown tonite
In the wind I still hear voices as the ancient comrades call
Does God in grace avert his face as another angel falls?
I can hear their voices clearer at the final curtain call
There were many who rejoiced to see a tiny sparrow fall
How the sins of all their fathers — stack up against the sons
Called but never chosen — to be their chosen ones
And the wind is weeping voices
They fill my tattooed sails
Maybe God in grace is crying at injustice that prevails
And averts his face in sufferance for those black trains on the rails
Perhaps right now he’s a-mocking my pretensions and portrayals
In forty days and forty night-time tales