The Wrote & the Writ

They're taking pictures of the man from God I hope his cassock's clean The burden of being a holy fella's Your halo'd better gleam, better gleam What of all those wayward priests? The ones who like to drink Do you suppose they'd swap their blood for wine Like you swapped yours for ink, for ink You wrote me oh-so-many letters And all of them seemed true Promises look good on paper Especially from you, from you The weight of all those willing words I carried all alone You wouldn't put your pen to bed When we hadn't found our own, our own Your sentences rose high at night And circled round my head The circle's since been broken Like the priest before me is breaking bread I'm being asked to drink the blood of Christ And soon I'll eat his flesh I'm alone again before the altar Shedding all my old regrets The last of which I'll tell you now As it flies down the sink I never knew a part of you You didn't set in ink, in ink The letters that you left behind No longer shall I read Your blood's between the pages And I can't stand to see you bleed And I'll soon forget what was never there Your words are ash and dust All that's left is the song I've sung The breath I've taken and the one I must If you're born with a love for the wrote and the writ People of letters, your warning stands clear: Pay heed to your heart and not to your wit Don't say in a letter what you can't in my ear