saw a girl on a train in a country I was leaving,
and she may have smiled at me, or that might be wishful thinking,
+++ anyway, I won’t see her again,
+++ and you can’t call a stranger a friend

on a street, in a town where I speak the language well enough to know
that I’m not home, and laugh at half the jokes, so I can tell
+++ that I’ve been here before,
+++ but that country’s not here anymore..
+++++ I was trying to be free, trying to be kind,
+++++ I’m just trying to be me, so I hope that you don’t mind
+++++ if I sing here on your street, in a language you don’t speak,
+++++ stalking poetry again, again..

+++++++ and every gray apartment building’s just a giant concrete filing cabinet
+++++++ for childhoods and family stories of people I don’t know at all,
+++++++ and at any given moment surely someone must be feeling
+++++++ every kind of human feeling somewhere in between those walls..

there’s a church on the square that they finally rebuilt
after the war, using stones that they sorted from the rubble,
+++ now the old stone is black from the smoke,
+++ while the new stone is yellow as gold,
+++++ underneath they’re both the same, pieced together, old and new,
+++++ in a town after the war everyone can see your wounds,
+++++ so I sing here on your street, in a language you don’t speak,
+++++ I’m stalking poetry again, again.. (repeat CH:1)