The very things I've done to you
Were the things I wanted to protect you from
Objectified your startling newness
Projected lover, savior, son
From you sweet child, my phantom past
I've taken clean and tender bones
To hang the skin of all the vast
And troubled wisdom I have known
And with marble wax and clay
Sat still, you, my beloved muse
With stroke of pen and fire and glaze
Always your face within my view
And with a life outside my will
With your beauty as my guide
I'm held aloft until, transformed
I fill your boundless raven skies
Oh
Once heady in the Pentecost
With tongues unknown and full of praise
Then one day all of that was lost
Now I'm a drone bereft of faith
Oh stay right there my little muse
Sweet sparkling devil of my mind
Soon I'll want nothing more of you
And you need not return in kind
But I will never rue the hours
I've spent with you on every page
When with affection, gave you power
Too keep my poetry engaged
And with a life outside my will
With your beauty as my guide
I'm held aloft until, transformed
I fill your boundless raven skies
Oh
Oh, La Vita Nuova
Didn't you work me over
But I'm hanging on
Oh, La Vita Nuova
Didn't you work me over
But I'm hanging on
With morning comes a garish light
Now screaming in through every gash
Where it cracks apart the stillness
Of my skin just like a lash
Now when I face what I've become
I laugh into the ashen gloom
When all my days I have outrun
Again with fondness I will conjure you
And with marble wax and clay
Sat still, you, my beloved muse
With stroke of pen and fire and glaze
Always your face within my view
And with a life outside my will
With your beauty as my guide
I'm held aloft until transformed
I fill your boundless raven skies
Oh, oh...