///*****/// [Intro] A yellow ribbon going grey A kitchen radio on [Verse 1] They left on a September morning From a station full of rain And the whole town came out waving And the band played something brave And the mothers held their faces In the way that mothers do And nobody said the obvious Which is that some would not come through And my brother had his rifle And my brother had my coat And he laughed and called me lazy And that is the last thing that he wrote [Pre-Chorus] Now the letters come on Fridays When they come at all And the postman does not look at us Coming up the hall [Chorus] And we are waiting on the porch light For the news we cannot bear We are waiting on the telephone And the footstep on the stair There is a whole town holding its breath Underneath a hard grey dome And nobody is living Till the boys come home Till the boys come home [Verse 2] Sarah keeps the shop still And she keeps his jacket clean And she irons it on a Sunday Like a woman in a dream And she says he liked it pressed And she says his given name And I do not say a word to her Because who am I to say That the hoping is a wound That we are cutting every day [Pre-Chorus] And the church is fuller lately And the bar is fuller too And there is not a soul in this whole town Who is not waiting on the news [Chorus] And we are waiting on the porch light For the news we cannot bear We are waiting on the telephone And the footstep on the stair There is a whole town holding its breath Underneath a hard grey dome And nobody is living Till the boys come home Till the boys come home [Verse 3] Some of them came back in April And the town went nearly mad And the horns went off till midnight And the whole thing was so glad And I stood there in the good crowd With my hands down at my side Watching brothers finding brothers And I smiled and I lied Because mine came home in a photograph And a folded flag and a box And I have not been able since that day To hear a marching drum [Pre-Chorus] So do not sing me about glory And do not sing me about pride Sing me about a kitchen And a boy who should be inside [Bridge] There is no anthem good enough There is no medal wide There is only what they took from us And what they never gave us back And a table with a place set That we have never taken back [Guitar Solo] [Final Chorus] So we are lighting up the porch light For the ones who did not come We are leaving on the kitchen lamp And we are counting all of them And this whole town remembers Underneath a hard grey dome And a part of us is waiting still For the boys to come home For the boys to come home [Coda] Here is to the ones who came back And who never came back right Here is to the ones who sit up In the middle of the night Here is to the sisters and the mothers And the ones who kept the light May the waiting have an ending And may the ending be alright [Outro] A yellow ribbon going grey A kitchen radio on And a place set at the table For a boy who is not gone
