Thirty-Three Misfortunes

Sometimes it happens for a minute you sink deep inside your mind With eyes shut tight and teeth clenched hard, old days are all you find When everything was plain and simple, you loved and you were loved Where troubles didn’t crowd the door, no small thing hit too hard Now in strangers’ eyes their smiling shines like steel so cold and gray Their words are full of hidden thorns, behind your back just shade And even joy feels like a window dressed in frozen light That leads you round in endless rings, the same each day and night But now the grown-up times have come, so bitter and so wild The storm is here, the slanting rain has lost its mercy mild They tear the soul and break it down and rip it part by part These thirty-three misfortunes claw and pull apart the heart They tear the heart and wear you down and pull upon your nerves This recent breakdown, truth be told, is not the first that hurts And there’s no normal, simple way to explain what fate has done So do not wait for sympathy from destiny to come You’ve grown much stronger, but within there’s only empty walls No hope remains, just fragile rounds where old remembrance calls From faded photographs of us, still flawed in every way Where every choice could lead us back to cliffs that fall away Sometimes it happens silence has much greater strength than screams You dive into it aimlessly, like springtime in your dreams And only rustling from someone’s sleep, a glimmer in the dark When you admit at last yourself: you were not weak at heart And if at night your memory comes again to gnaw your soul Don’t run away, stay with it there, and let it take its toll Because sometimes it’s only pain that lays you gently bare And melts the ice from off the face that turned itself to stone somewhere But now the grown-up times have come, so bitter and so wild The storm is here, the slanting rain has lost its mercy mild They tear the soul and break it down and rip it part by part These thirty-three misfortunes claw and pull apart the heart They tear the heart and wear you down and pull upon your nerves This recent breakdown, truth be told, is not the first that hurts And there’s no normal, simple way to explain what fate has done So do not wait for sympathy from destiny to come But now the grown-up times have come, so bitter and so wild The storm is here, the slanting rain has lost its mercy mild They tear the soul and break it down and rip it part by part These thirty-three misfortunes claw and pull apart the heart