Hey! Throw the bones in the river, cher Let the black water sing Ain’t no saints down here tonight Mud on my feet and blood in the cane Moon hanging low like a rusted chain Grandmama warned me stay out the reeds But the swamp got a mouth and it whispers to me Dead cypress breathing through the fog Something moving where the river dogs bark Washboards rattle like coffin nails While the night eats holes through the prayer veil And the mosquitoes swarm Like little devils born from heat The dance floor shakes beneath us Like graves beneath the street DANCE! DANCE! Till the levee breaks apart Accordion crying like a tortured heart Blastbeats raining like a southern storm Blackened zydeco born in the rot Danse Dans Le Marais Noir! DANCE! DANCE! With the ghosts out in the cane Barefoot sinners screaming in the rain Heaven too dry for the likes of me So I howl where the drowned things sing Possum skull hanging over the door Chicken bones scattered on the floor Mama’s rosary covered in mold Still swing it hard when the north wind blows Fiddle strings cut my fingers raw Scraping old hymns from a cypress log Somebody buried beneath these roots Still stomping time in their Sunday boots HEY! Throw your body in the sawgrass fire HEY! Let the swamp take every liar HEY! Wash that sorrow in muddy wine HEY! One more dance before we die I seen shadows crawl from the bayou fog Teeth like broken bottleneck glass They laughed in French I could barely know And dragged old memories through the marsh wet earth under my nails And a rhythm too mean to die DANCE! DANCE! Till your lungs fill up with rain Till your name wash loose from your grave Accordion shrieking through corpsepaint skies While the washboard sparks like blades Danse Dans Le Marais Noir! DANCE! DANCE! Till the swamp remembers you Every sin and every truth If God comes down he better stomp in time Or the mud gon’ swallow him too Danse Dans Le Marais Noir!
