[Verse 1] What a tangle What a strangling knot to be caught in To be exiled here To be stuck in Berlin with Vienna so near Yet so far from the Emperors ear What a strange and impossible sum To be old while to still be so young To have sung before speaking a word To be heard To be hailed Then to fail To be done To love but to be so naive To trust and to be so deceived To mourn, forlorn, to be torn from you Scorned for another who suffers no grief To curse God, seeking lightning And to still be ignored To hide in this room, now too rich to afford To hear armies of creditors bang at the door Always yelling for more And to have nothing to sell that could help Except for the Steinway that sits in the corner [Verse 2] For Arthur it all came too easily To learn the scales in every key To play the etudes and the suites The nocturnes and The Fantaisie To master the sonatas, minuets, and symphonies To seek the truth in fits and starts To strike the middle F like its an arrow through the heart To wing the right hand like a dove the peaceful flutter of a dove And with left a violent shove some moments will demand a shove To needle gently yet relentless with a steady foot upon the pedal And to clench the iron first inside the velvet glove To learn to whisper and to scream the whisper justifies the scream To let each yearning finger breathe no, nothing lives unless it breathes To burn, to worship, to mislead To pose a question with a pinky on a key To flee, to fight, to bleed To float in air Nothing solid underneath To rap those heavy knuckles on the gate to heaven til theres nothing to Achieve, but To go retrieve the length of cable hidden in the cabinet To metamorphosize the twisted rope unto an alphabet To lay the lazy C upon the shabby wooden floor to rest To send the end across the top to bend the C into an S To curve the tail beneath the S to turn the tangle to a B To hug the wretched root around the fibers suffocatingly To wrap again to wrap again to give the coil seven loops To penetrate the yawning hoop To tug the loose appendage through To yank the knot until its ready for the job its got to do To toss the braid above the ceiling beam and to affix the noose To bid adieu to all of you until theres nothing left to do but Climb the chair To cinch the collar Find the edge To step into the air
tangle, nothing, shove, dove, fantaisie