Lyrics The Wrote and the Writ - Johnny Flynn

The Wrote and the Writ

They’re taking pictures of the man from God
I hope his cassock’s clean
The burden of being a holy fella’s
Your halo’d better gleam, better gleam
What of all those wayward priests?
The ones who like to drink
Do you suppose they’d swap their blood for wine
Like you swapped yours for ink, for ink
You wrote me oh-so-many letters
And all of them seemed true
Promises look good on paper
Especially from you, from you
The weight of all those willing words
I carried all alone
You wouldn’t put your pen to bed
When we hadn’t found our own, our own
Your sentences rose high at night
And circled round my head
The circle’s since been broken
Like the priest before me is breaking bread
I’m being asked to drink the blood of Christ
And soon I’ll eat his flesh
I’m alone again before the altar
Shedding all my old regrets
The last of which I’ll tell you now
As it flies down the sink
I never knew a part of you
You didn’t set in ink, in ink
The letters that you left behind
No longer shall I read
Your blood’s between the pages
And I can’t stand to see you bleed
And I’ll soon forget what was never there
Your words are ash and dust
All that’s left is the song I’ve sung
The breath I’ve taken and the one I must
If you’re born with a love for the wrote and the writ
People of letters, your warning stands clear:
Pay heed to your heart and not to your wit
Don’t say in a letter what you can’t in my ear