Remember The Mountain Bed

Billy Bragg

Do you still sing of the mountain bed we made of limbs and leaves? 
Do you still sigh there near the sky where the holly berry bleeds? 
You laughed as I covered you over with leaves 
Face, breast, hips, and thighs 
You smiled when I said the leaves were just the color of your eyes 

Rosin smells and turpentine smells from eucalyptus and pine 
Bitter tastes of twigs we chewed where tangled wood vines twine 
Trees held us in on all four sides so thick we could not see 
I could not see any wrong in you, and you saw none in me 

Your arm was brown against the ground, your cheeks part of the sky 
Your fingers played with grassy moss, as limber you did lie 
Your stomach moved beneath your shirt and your knees were in the air 
Your feet played games with mountain roots as you lay thinking there 

Below us the trees grew clumps of trees, raised families of trees, and they 
As proud as we tossed their heads in the wind and flung good seeds away 
The sun was hot and the sun was bright down in the valley below 
Where people starved and hungry for life so empty come and go 

There in the shade and hid from the sun we freed our minds and learned 
Our greatest reason for being here, our bodies moved and burned 
There on our mountain bed of leaves we learned life's reason why 
The people laugh and love and dream, they fight, they hate to die 

The smell of your hair I know is still there, if most of our leaves are blown 
Our words still ring in the brush and the trees where singing seeds are sown 
Your shape and form is dim but plain, there on our mountain bed 
I see my life was brightest where you laughed and laid your head

I learned the reason why man must work and how to dream big dreams 
To conquer time and space and fight the rivers and the seas 
I stand here filled with my emptiness now and look at city and land 
And I know why farms and cities are built by hot, warm, nervous hands 

I crossed many states just to stand here now, my face all hot with tears 
I crossed city, and valley, desert, and stream, to bring my body here 
My history and future blaze bright in me and all my joy and pain 
Go through my head on our mountain bed where I smell your hair again. 

All this day long I linger here and on in through the night 
My greed's, desires, my cravings, hopes, my dreams inside me fight
My loneliness healed, my emptiness filled, I walk above all pain 
Back to the breast of my woman and child to scatter my seeds again