Trouble seeks the tired heart

        abashed with red hands, —

        a seething beast, bleeding! —

        rampant under diamond skies.

        Atop the empty hill, crucified,

        the lonely heart bickers

        and stumbles against the bricks.

        Peace! peace! cry the bricks,

        but the body falls, laborious,

        and the softened sobs alight

        against the cracked marble.

        Somewhere in the naked eaves

        of thickened shadow-weed,

        a tambourine-man plays,

        rattling his hands to the beat

        of blood in a desiccated body,

        one stuffed with straw and string.

        And he sings, soft and sleepy,

        like the bard at midnight,

        his eyes glossy, his hair afire,

        as his hands try to flee, but can’t,

        catching on the jagged notes

        which erupt from the tambourine.

        And under the wild diamond skies,

        the tambourine man sighs, a breeze,

        and serenades the tombs dwindling,

        as tends to ’cur, in the silver moonlight.

        Beckon the quiet lungs, say his hands,

        and hear Love break as she tears

        her chest and bleeds the world red,

        like a wound in the side of God.

        But soon the tambourine is silent,

        as the hills drag away his music,

        and on the horizon the sun awakes,

        his hair like dilapidated yarn, stringy,

        and when the clouds burst and drop

        tassels of purpled rain on a world

        dressed in diamond tears, so pretty,

        as finally the tambourine-man is gone,

        the lonely heart, vapid, black, dies.