The Refugee Songtext
von Ezra Furman

I am a refugee now
I′m running like mad across a frosty green Poland
My head in a sack and the blood in my brain screaming
"How did this happen and where am I now?"
Who is so blue in this freeze
Who is so grey with the history

Rain dancing all on my face without mercy
And the muscles relax and I just have to laugh
Through the loose teeth and tissue
The symphony builds under your boot
And the horns drool in harmony


Dancers all swoon, this is my bloody tune
My last gasp of the past
My thorn in the side of the violence of time
I won't scream, I won′t writhe
I am laughing and burning alive
Like a thornbush that grew in the hot countryside
Now the fire is high and I am not consumed
Yes, this is the room
This is the old song from memory
This is the sound of the Jew who refuses to die

April 4th, 1944
I recall my old address no more
I live day to day on the glossy dancefloor
Of a wide countryside full of disappeared people
I sleep in the churches, eat grass like a goat
The calendar hangs on the wall of my memory
My name is inscribed up the sleeve of my coat
Here I am

Take this document with you, the lines that I wrote
As I bled through the night in a strange rusted land
I have ripped the page out, it is here in my hand
Here I am


Person of the book
But I've lost my page like so many others
I am left to inscribe my own name on a torn one
We'll have a new book scattered far across the expanses
The scrapbook of signatures scrawled in forgotten, lost diaries
Texts to recite when time′s bloody boot
Dances and kicks in the bone of our chest like soft earth
And our ancient hoarse voices will echo in song
And resound off the curve of a high stony ceiling
The curve of the arch from our death to our birth