Tortoises All the Way Down

Watchmen with their eyes closed,
 ransom and a scripture by the picture of your face
 Messages the rhymes chose,
 blueprint for contrition in a cigarette case
 Everybody knows, son
 Everybody knows what you've done
 Everybody knows, son
 Everybody knows exactly what you've done
 Charles was alive then,
 towering like a mountain at the silver trumpet blast
 William still alive till when our altars
 are all emptied of his offerings to the last
 Everybody knows, son
 Everybody knows just what you've done
 Everybody knows, son
 And so again it goes you can't end what you've begun
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 Surely as the sun early on the east side comes
 Before my sleepless eyes your features metamorphosize
 Surely as the sun early on the east side comes
 If only you had known how soon you'd be on your own
 How suddenly they'd cast the stone
 When the mouths of praise and blame start to sound the same
 And you've asked they please not come back around
 And yet they happen by, you can offer my reply:
 "There's tortoises all the way down."
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 Since the night you came dressed up in your righteous name
 All you claim to see doesn't mean a thing to me
 Surely as the sun early on the east side comes
 I know I'm not the only one
 Whose blindfold-and-a-scale-ship refused to sail
 And yet failed since each search for solid ground
 You sing to me at night as the moving finger writes
 On tortoises all the way down
 You think that glass of wine could cancel half a line?
 But it won't wash our words out this time
 And I'm not the only one who's got nowhere to run
 Cause everybody knows, son
 Everybody knows just what you've done
 Everybody knows, son
 Everybody knows what you've done
 While all hiding inside our painting-of-a-house-hung-up-inside- that
 same-painted-house-which-ever-implies-another-painted-house-inside lives
 Serpent-in-the-sky-lives!
 Servants-of-the-least-high!
 Most-tortoiseless lives!
 Would you meet me sometime soon, son, down by the riverside?
 There's room enough in my paradise
 My empty little mind