(Verse 1) Down where the sun has never been, Where stone drinks light and keeps it thin, My boots tread dust older than trees, And every breath tastes of centuries. No lark, no leaf, no morning dew, Yet something green still calls me through. (Chorus) O Father Wild, though blind rocks hide Your face, I feel Your pulse in this deep place. In blind fish swimming, in mushrooms’ glow, In the slow drip where the cave-waters flow— You never left me, You never will, Your heart beats on where the sun lies still. (Verse 2) I miss the wind that combs the pine, The rowan red, the curling vine, The hawk’s high cry at breaking day, The smell of rain on warm, crushed hay. Here only echoes answer me, Yet even echoes breathe Your tree. (Chorus) O Father Wild, though blind rocks hide Your face, I feel Your pulse in this deep place. In bat-wing flutter, in crystal vein, In the quiet moss that softens pain— You never left me, You never will, Your heart beats on where the sun lies still. (Verse 3) A blind white crab goes scuttling by, A spider spins where starlight dies, Pale salamander, soft as a prayer, Moves like a secret through the air. Small lives, strange lives, but lives You keep— Even the darkness is not asleep. (Bridge) So let the ceiling press me low, Let shadows drink the torch’s glow; Still I will sing beneath the stone That every rootless thing is known, And every hidden bloom and wing Is held the same in Your wild spring. (Verse 4) One day I’ll climb to open sky, One day the green will shine my eye, I’ll kiss the bark and drink the breeze, And laugh beneath the shining freeze. Till then I walk this night-womb road And carry forest in my blood. (Final Chorus (soft, then swelling)) O Father Wild, though blind rocks hide Your face, I feel Your pulse in this deep place. In every creature that dares to be I meet the wild green heart of Thee. You never left me, You never will— Your living world is with me still. Your living world is with me still.
