First Time

Remember, once I told you about how, before I heard it from your mouth My name would always hit my ears as such an awful sound? And the soul, if that's what you'd call it, uneasy ally of the body It felt nameless as a river undiscovered underground And the first time that you kissed me, I drank dry the River Lethe The Liffey would have been softer on my stomach all the same But you spoke some quick new music that went so far to soothe this soul As it was and ever shall be, unearth without a name Some part of me must have died The first time that you called me "baby" And some part of me came alive The first time that you called me "baby" These days, I think I owe my life to flowers that were left here By my mother, ain't that like them, gifting life to you again? This life lived mostly underground, unknowing either sight nor sound 'Til reaching up for sunlight just to be ripped out by the stem And sensing only now it's dying, drying out, then drowning blindly Blooming forth, its every colour in the moments it has left To share the space with simple living things, infinitely suffering But fighting off, like all creation, the absence of itself, but anyway Some part of me must have died Each time that you called me "baby" And some part of me stayed alive Each time that you called, each time that you called Come here, ooh-la-la, ooh-la-la Whatever keeps you around, it keeps you around Ooh-la-la, come here, ooh-la-la Whatever keeps you around, it keeps you around The last time it was heard out loud The perfect genius of our hands and mouths Were shocked to resignation as the arguing declined When I was young, I used to guess, are there limits to any emptiness? When was the last time? Come here to me, when was the last time? Some part of me must have died The final time you called me "baby" But some part of me came alive The final time you called me "baby"