// They put me down for Tuesday Gave me bones and half a name. Taught me north was what I wanted, South was somewhere I should blame. At school they called a number, I learned to turn my head. They said a man should know his place. I took a walk instead. I've been a hundred people Before the afternoon. A soldier in a foreign field, A madman watching June. My uncle sang on Capitola My father crossed the Felton rain. And here I sit beside the window, With half their journeys in my name. One life is a narrow room For all I want to be. The world keeps turning in my head, And won't make room for me. (It won't make room for me.) I love the ones who lost their way, Who never learned to kneel. The mothers and the restless fools, Who say just what they feel. I don't believe in tidy answers, Or people who pretend That living has a proper shape, A purpose and an end. One life is a narrow room For all I want to be. The world keeps turning in my head, And won't make room for me. The man I was at twenty Still follows me around. He knows a few old secrets That I thought I'd buried down. And sometimes in the evening, When the sea is turning grey, I feel a thousand other lives Go quietly on their way. I have no use for certainty, No theory I can keep. I've stood beside the desperate, I've loved the ones who weep. And when they come to ask me What I've made of all these years, I'll say I wasn't one thing long Enough to disappear. One life is a narrow room For all I want to be. The world keeps turning in my head, And won't make room for me. But leave the window open, Let the evening wander through. There may be room for other lives In everything I do. The bay is growing darker. The streetlights come alive. I'm neither sad nor happy. I'm here, for now, alive. (I'm here, for now, alive.)
