How About Something…Strange?

     This is the final track of Earth Opera’s first album. Listen at your own peril: once you’ve heard it, it will stay with you for days:

I decree that her death be by rumor the skull gleamed
And creaking sat back in its chair
In agreement the room full of white teeth all clicked
And they said we must do what is fair

While the priests prepared hammers and nails
And the carpenters planed
The nuns nodded knowing to sentence a sinner
Is justice and law of the same

In the cobblestone streets of the village
The hawkers and mongers are wagging their tongues
With sly smiles of insinuation they watch her
And talk of the ensuing fun

Her beauty defilement
She will now pay for this crime of lust
The monks in the towers are pealing the bells
To remind the people that they must

And the carrion crows are arriving in droves
As the sun sets to pick the bones clean
And the clowns stand around and they stare at the ground
And they secretly weep at the scene

In the rectory, the priest laughs
And lets the wine drip down his vest
He calls and caresses his lover who laughs
As he wipes his mouth on his chest

The widows and virgins at watch in the window
As sinners are purged down bellow
No willows will weep for her silence of ashes
Will sleep in the new-fallen snow

— Peter Rowan –