Lyrics Okkervil River – A Hand To Take Hold Of The Scene

I’m a band in a show about a man holding hands with his wife
On a therapist’s couch, with his face to the ground after fucking around countless nights
And there’s this one episode, close-up cameras are showing him crying
His red head and his red eyes

I’m a band in a show about a boy being buried alive
From his head to his toes, by a criminal, but with a sensitive soul, with a set of raccoon eyes
And there’s this scene in the show when a hustler knows he’s gonna die
The ground opens and he climbs inside

And as he speaks his last line, a thought falls from his mind, and I pick it up right through the TV
Oh, oh
Is there a hand to take hold of the scene?

I’m a man in a dream and there, dancing in front of my eyes
Is a queen formed out of flaws, with her eyes all gone odd and a rod bolted into her spine
She rises up like a yawn, grips my heart like a claw, splits apart like a jaw, like an eye
And she asks me with a sigh

«When we’re so far from right, when we’re losing the fight, when we are letting the light weaken its beam
Oh, oh
Is there a hand to take hold of the scene?»

I want a smile like a glistening shard
I want a kiss that’s as sharp as a knife
The day expires
And the dry, cracked, trembling lips
God saw fit to put this kiss inside
I lift them up to you
I’d like to bear witness to
A light that is fine and is filling the cryingest eyes
Grace in each face that is making the wastedest, brokenest ones fairly fly
Love that is innocent of that old cynical, covetous, cancerous vibe
And a beauty that annihilates all life

Like it’s lived in these nights, holding your hatred tight like a sign that you’re right or you’re strong