The Juniper Tree

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a low harmonium and a far-off boys-choir shimmer, a lullaby with something wrong under it)

[Verse 1]
She had no love for the boy, only the daughter of her own,
so she called him to the apple chest and she brought the heavy stone.
"Reach in for a red one, darling" — and the lid came down like fate,
and she dressed the crime in supper and she served him on a plate.

[Chorus]
But the juniper remembers, and the bones beneath it sing —
you can bury a small murder, but you can't unbury spring.
Marlene tied his bones in silk and she laid them in the shade,
and a bird rose up all fire and eyes from the little grave she made.

[Verse 2]
"My mother, she killed me; my father, he ate me" —
the bird sang it sweet from the churchyard tree,
traded the song for a chain, for shoes, for a millstone fine,
and dropped the stone on the guilty head right down the family line.

[Bridge]
(the choir swells, tender and terrible)
The mind will not stay buried what the heart has known —
the repressed comes back with feathers on, and it will not come alone.

[Outro]
And the smoke curled up, and the boy stepped down, alive and whole and small...
some truths just grow a pair of wings and sing above it all.