I found the garden gate unlocked so I went inAnd picked the perfect spot where I could bury my youthBut hounds of love and hounds of warHounds galoreThose hoary hounds were pouncingEach with waxy wooden toothsRemember when it dawned on youThe day that you knew thatYou could live forever and still never make a masterpieceTo shut those pups up in the leastBut everybody knowsThat's the way it goesEven if you die on the oceanEvery Wednesday afternoonMe and you bleeding on the newspaper classifiedsDragging out the drinking down for high school kids whoDied out on the highway in the middle of the nightSing a song that means you loveEveryone who's ever come within the soundOf any of your cloudy wordsBut get your song together firstSave it 'til you're sureHang it on the doorSing it from the top of the mountain'Til everybody knowsExactly how it goesEven if you die on the oceanEven when you die on the oceanChildren screaming speeches into microscopic tape recordersWired to the mire of the moatAnd I was still at odds with several thousand nonbelieversBoth above and belowSmoking silhouettes outside the school with all the cymbalistsThe simplest way I knew to goAnd we could talk ourselves into the dreary deepsBefore we realized there was a hole in the boatAnd everybody's answer to the worldWas "We should start another world!"And I said, "What do you propose? Because you knowThe world that we've got going now has to beThe hardest place I've ever beenIt's got me shrinking in my skin, but then again, I guessThat everybody knowsThat's just the way it goes."Even if you die on the oceanThere's just so many crownsAnd everybody drownsEverybody dies on the ocean
