Tropic Of Cancer

The tropic of the cancer
In every solitary dancer
Is a line dividing dream
From hard devotion
Residing in the heart
It stands destiny apart
From all decision
Though we stumble
Through the motion

The country that we live in
And all the names we have given
A sky called blue and a love
That speaks in English
Stretched out between the poles
All of this territory rolls
The great blind empty
Between the mind
And whatever love is
Love is

A ring around a rose
The only dance the compass knows
Trains the needle on a thing we cannot find
A rose by any other
Name a thing and soon discover
The finest pin will never hold a butterfly

The heart as it relaxes
Undressed upon its axis
Like a plain girl
With all the paint rubbed off
It whispers to our bones
That we are everyone alone
Of the word and by the word again forsaken

And still my restless tongue
Caring nothing for the sum
Begins the calculus of hope and intuition

A ring around a rose
The only dance the compass knows
Trains the needle on the thing we cannot find
In the hothouse of our passion
So much striving and so much fashion
When God alone will call a rose a rose
God alone will call a rose a rose
God alone will call a rose a rose