New Song For the Crossroads

The Saints they gather in the shadows.
And the Widows they mill around the field.
While one Saint kneels down to sharpen up his sword,
One Widow kneels and hammers at a shield.
And they know throughout all their loving
That they’ll never get out of this world alive.
If the flood waters rise they would calmly close their eyes
And sleep at the bottom of the sea.
And you can tell your daddy I still love you
And there’s nothing in the world would ever change my mind
But if it’s honor that he wants, well then it’s honor he shall have
And I will meet him at the crossroads at dawn.
As we walk between the fields and the shadows
Arm-in-arm and making up a song,
We hear a baby cry in a window far away
And you say he’s only trying to sing along.
Oh, sweet Anne of San Francisco
Let me tell you all about the scene of the crime.
I was just a young man in a foreign room
And it was either his blood or mine.
And you can tell your daddy I still love you
And there’s nothing in the world would ever change my mind
But if it’s honor that he wants, well then it’s honor he shall have
And I will meet him at the crossroads at dawn.
And he will come from the west all dressed in black
With a pistol bleeding in the palm of his hand
And I will rise from the east like a newborn son
And I’ll be leading a ragtime band.
And we will sing a new song for the crossroads
We will play it to the fields and the shadows everywhere
And when the time comes along I will lay down my song
And I will fire all my pistols in the air.