I Could Only Stand by Lyrics

You could go for hours, months, and days,
In that half-hearted, pinched kind of way.
And you don't get too often to the bruise-coloured lake,
To stand, hands in your pockets.

Sometimes you don't see nothing much there:
Sunken old moorings, rusted-out stairs, and white sailboats against the sky,
Not really knowing what you came there to find.

Not the building's concrete spines.
Not the bitterness you always can divine
And pull from your heart like so much twine,
Ravelling, unravelling, ravelling fine.

You got pretty lost there in your own mind,
Pathways to hallways to doorways blind.
All through the winter I could only stand by,
Watching you wake to the hardest kind of trouble,
With no guiding line.

I stood beside you, thin as a kite, wincing in the wind's cool bite.
Telling me you'll never get nothing right.
Laughing as you said it, in the low sunlight –
So brief in November, and impossibly bright.