The Bull

©1979 Andrew Calhoun, recorded on Where Blue Meets Blue

Making choices – the right choice, the wrong choice, and that popular favorite – the attempt to not make one.


It makes no difference, how I behave
Things are good, things are bad, I'm a king and a slave
I'm a rock and a stone, a sea and a wave
Waiting for the shoreline to reach me

The one with the truth has the bull by the horns
Lucky to breathe and to be kept born
Illusions will shatter as the body is shorn
Of the leaves that grew in the morning

God had a bowtie, God had a gun
He was your little brother, he was looking for his fun
He went up you and down you with a knife and the sun
And he paused at the threshold of swallowing you

The one with a lie has the bull by the tail
Lucky to strangle, lucky to fail
Pulled to and fro through the dirt by the bull
Like a leaf in the wind in the winter

Listen to the footsteps, beating on the bridge
Running past the rivers where dead men live
They are walking off the mountain, they are falling off the ledge
Their wish is firmly broken and their souls are pledged

Those who hold no handle but to wish their bodies well
Are sanctified in terror, are counted out in Hell
Go wandering in limbo with their lives and bellies full
But they finish up in silence in the belly of the bull


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