Fried chicken, beans an’ taters, an’ shoo-fly pie for afters
then took me to a snoozin’ some whilst waitin’ for the moon.
On the porch where I in keepin’ with evenin’ in its sleepin’
an’ the weepin’ willers weepin’, a melancholy tune.
When woken with the jitters, them goddamn buzzin’ critters,
they’d rile ye up in bothers an’ they’d bring to boil yer blood.
Twixt them an’ I beratin’, to liquor, I’d be takin’,
to calm me consternation ’till me protests understood.
Mellowed in me bourbon, to observe without disturbin’
the stars when they appearin’ in a mess of far-flung lights.
’Tis as if they’re entertainin’, a million years in trainin’:
mad ye’d be complainin’ mid the charms of southern nights.
I chewed me some tobaccy as would have done me pappy;
still miss him some, for he up gone, too, long he’d been forlorn.
Mama, too, done passed away, broke pa’s heart or so they say,
buried them beneath the clay where the weepin’ willers mourn.
’Twas I, who left in needin’ in the remnants of me grievin’,
where hopes rely, the by-an’-by, whatever comes to hand.
Though dress me evenin’s easy, whatever comes let please me,
if the reaper comes to seize me, well, I shall understand.
I who of the moment in the mellow moon’s atonement,
for wait I not the morrow comes when I may be no more.
’Tis how I live, always done, the ways that them rivers run,
flow into what they become ’till they meet the ocean’s shore.
Remember well, that lonesome cry, was lost on me ownsome, I,
when she, as if like flotsam, aye, washed up on my lament.
Was near to tossin’ in me lot, round an’ round the hangman’s knot,
in madness nearly lost the plot, when she from heaven sent.
Dressed in cloths of calico, all the way from Mexico,
a maiden fair, a songstress an’ a lover of the moon.
She took me hand an’ wedded me, pledged, loved an’ bedded me,
when fevers came, she dead from me an’ buried her too soon.
I’ll take me head to pillow for I the weary fellow,
for much too much a thinkin’ ’bout, ’twould sink a man too deep.
Yet deep is the sadness though I won’t allow the madness,
remember them with gladness, let them weepin’ willers weep.