No Provenance

[Verse 1]
Allelu, allelu:
I have died happy and lived to tell the tale to you
I have slept for forty years and woke to find me gone
I woke safe and warm in your arms

[Refrain]
In your arms
Your arms
In your arms

[Verse 2]
Not informed of the natural law
Squatting lordly on a stool in a stall
We spun gold clear out of straw
And when our bales of bullion were stored
You burned me like a barn
I burned safe and warm in your arms

[Refrain]
In your arms
Your arms

[Verse 3]
I'm afraid of the Big Return
There's a certain conversation lost and that loss incurred
With nobody remaining to register
Who had passed this way in the night
In the middle of the night, negating their grace and their sight
'Til only I remember or mark
How we had our talk, we took our ride
So that there was no one home
And the lights of Rome flickered and died
And, what's more, I believe that you knew it too
I think you saw their flares
And kept me safely unawares in your arms

[Refrain]
Your arms
In your arms

[Verse 4]
The grass was tall and strung with burrs
I essayed that high sashay which
In my mind, was my way, you hung behind in yours
Anyhow, she did not neigh
I do not know what drew our eyes to hers
That little black mare did not stir
'Til I lay down in your arms

[Verse 5]
Poor old dirty little dog-size horse
Swaying and wheezing as a matter of course
Swaying and wheezing as a matter of pride
That poor old nag, not four palms wide
Had waited a long time
Coated in salt, buckled like a ship run foul of the fence
And in the middle of the night
She'd sprung up no provenance
Bearing the whites of her eyes
And you, with your 'arrangement' with Fate
Nodded sadly at her lame assault on that steady old gate
Her faultlessly etiolated fishbelly-face
The muzzle of a ghost
And pretty Johnny Appleseed, via satellite feed
Tell us, who was it that you then loved the most?
Pretty Johnny Appleseed, leave a trail that leads
Straight back down to the farm
Lay me down safe and warm in your arms

[Refrain]
In your arms