The Killing Fields - Rosanne Cash, John Leventhal

You crossed on Brooklyn Ferry not a boy, but not a man

Left behind the Navy Yard

And your father’s mislaid plans

I was at the other ocean

And I could not get away

From the flurry of emergencies every single day

There was cotton on the killing fields

It blows down through the years

Sticks to me just like a burn fills my eyes and ears

All that came before me is not everything I am

A girl who settled far too low

On religion and that man

The low ebb of the rocky soil

The high tide of the trees

The dust of men and thunderstorms

The parched and rolling sea

He’s running through the killing fields

Just like a hunted deer

Impartial moon, uncaring stars

He falls where no one hears

The blood that runs on cypress trees

Cannot be washed away by mothers' tears

And gasoline and secrets un-betrayed

I know it’s hard to hear these words

They sure are hard to say

But listen to the mockingbird

Who sings over their graves

The ripple of the life unlived

The ghosts of mice and men

The empty space of one man’s heart

And what he might have been

But St. Margaret, she looks over us

St. Margaret and her kin

At the far edge of the killing fields

She stands there now and then

So goodbye to your Navy Yard

Goodbye to my sea

A truce between the East and West

And my Southern history

Goodbye to the killing fields

I’ll break every single bow

'Cause all that came before you

And all that came before me

And all that came before us

Is not who we are now