Lyrics The Randall Knife - Guy Clark

The Randall Knife

My father had a Randall knife, my mother gave it to him
When he went off to World War II to save us all from ruin
Now if you’ve ever held a Randall knife, you know my father well
If a better blade was ever made it was prob’ly forged in hell
My father was a good man, he was a lawyer by his trade
Only once did I ever see him misuse the blade
Well, it almost cut his thumb off when he took it for a tool
Ah, the knife was made for darker things, you could not bend the rules
Well, he let me take it camping once on a Boy Scout jamboree
And I broke a half-an-inch off tryin' to stick it in a tree
Well, I hid it from him for a while but the knife and he were one
And he put it in his bottom drawer without a hard word one
There it slept and there it stayed for twenty some-odd years
Sort of like Excalibur except waiting for a tear
My father died when I was forty and I couldn’t find a way to cry
Not because I didn’t love him, not because he didn’t try
Well, I’d cried for every lesser thing: for whiskey, pain, and beauty
But he deserved a better tear and I was not quite ready
So we took his ashes out to sea and poured 'em off the stern
And then threw the roses in the wake of everything we’d learned
And when we got back to the house they asked me what I wanted
Not the law books, not the watch-I need the thing he’s haunted
My hand burned for the Randall knife there in the bottom drawer
And I found a tear for my father’s life and all that it stood for