Lamentation

Lamentation
by Si Kahn & Tom Chapin
© 2006 Joe Hill Music & The Last Music Co. (ASCAP)

A piece of quilt is torn away
To be repaired but not replaced.
And yet it still extends its warmth
Around this family.
My older brother died too young,
A shooting star across the skies.
Yet every song he wrote and sung
Lives on in you and me.
Lamentation for those who now are gone.
Celebration, in us they carry on.

And now we gather once again
To mourn another brother gone.
And we are moved by grief and pain
To come back to this place.
Yet even here we laugh and sing,
We tell his stories, hear his voice.
For death still leaves us everything,
Except for his embrace.
Lamentation for those who now are gone.
Celebration, in us they carry on.

And I who was the third in line,
My universe is different now.
But what was theirs is not now mine,
It stays with them alone.
But they are with me every day,
And I'll remember what he said:
“We know we cannot fill his shoes,
But we can fill our own.”
Lamentation for those who now are gone.
Celebration, in us they carry on.
In us they carry on.

This song appears on Tom Chapin's The Turning Of The Tide CD.

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