This is called "This Hour and What Is Dead."
I think this has to do with a quarrel.
I have been continually with the God of my father.
My father was a Presbyterian minister
but he resembled an Old Testament prophet,
you know obsessive, angry.
This has to do with quarrels I have
with that aspect of his God.
I remember while we were wandering
throughout Southeast Asia.
My father was a fugitive and things were just
falling apart around us.
We were living among other people's things.
We never had any money.
We were always trying to learn a new language.
And through it all my father kept doing this thing.
He kept translating from the Bible.
He was very fluent in Hebrew and Greek.
And he kept doing this.
And he said it kept him sane.
And I think I never understood that.
Of course I was very young.
But even as I grew older and I look
back I don't understand how that could--
I do and I don't understand how devotion
to that kind of God, an Old Testament God,
could make any sense, especially when we were in exile.
It's called "This Hour and What Is Dead."
"Tonight my brother in heavy boots
is walking through bare rooms over my head, opening
and closing doors.
What could he be looking for in an empty house?
What could he possibly need there in heaven.
Does he remember his Earth, his birthplace set to torches?
His love for me feels like spilled water running back
to its vessel.
At this hour what is dead is restless and what is living
is burning.
Someone tell him he should sleep now.
My father keeps a light on by our bed
and readies for our journey.
He mends ten holes at the knees of five pairs of boy's pants.
His love for me is like his sewing, too much thread
and various colors, the stitching uneven.
But the needle pierces clean through with each stroke
of his hand.
At this hour what is dead is worried and what is living
is fugitive.
Someone tell him he should sleep now.
God, that old furnace keeps talking
with his mouth of teeth, a beard stained
at feasts and his breath of gasoline, airplane, human ash.
His love for me feels like fire, feels like doves,
feels like river water.
At this hour what is dead is helpless, kind and helpless
while the Lord lives.
Someone tell the Lord to leave me alone.
I've had enough of his love that feels like burning and flight
and running away."