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E A B E (2X)
E
My father had a Randall knife
A
My mother gave it to him
B
When he went off to World War Two
A E
To save us all from ruin
E
If you've ever held a Randall knife,
A
you know my father well
B
If a better blade was ever made
A E
It was probably forged in hell
My father was a good man
A lawyer by his trade
And only once did I ever see
Him misuse the blade
It almost cut his thumb off
When he took it for a tool
The knife was made for darker things
And you could not bend the rules
He let me take it camping once
On a Boy Scout jamboree
And I broke a half an inch off
Trying to stick it in a tree
I hid it from him for a while
But the knife and he were one
He put it in his bottom drawer
Without a hard word one
There it slept and there it stayed
For twenty some odd years
Sort of like Excalibur
Except waiting for a tear
My father died when I was forty
And I couldn't find a way to cry
Not because I didn't love him
Not because he didn't try
I'd cried for every lesser thing
Whiskey, pain and beauty
But he deserved a better tear
And I was not quite ready
So we took his ashes out to sea
And poured `em off the stern
And threw the roses in the wake
Of everything we'd learned
When we got back to the house
They asked me what I wanted
Not the lawbooks, not the watch--
I need the thing he's haunted
My hand burned for the Randall knife
There in the bottom drawer
And I found a tear for my father's life
And all that it stood for
[Thanks to David for corrections]
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