And no-one saw the carny go <br />And the weeks flew by <br />Until they moved on the show <br />Leaving his caravan behind <br />It was parked out on the south east ridge <br />And as the company crossed the bridge <br />With the first rain filling the bone-dry river bed <br />It shone, just so, upon the edge <br />Away, away, we're sad, they said <br /><br />Dog-boy, atlas, half-man, the geeks, the hired hands <br />There was not one among them that did not cast an eye behind <br />In the hope that the carny would return to his own kind <br /><br />And the carny had a horse, all skin and bone <br />A bow-backed nag, that he named "Sorrow" <br />How it is buried in a shallow grave <br />In the then parched meadow <br /><br />And the dwarves were given the task of digging the ditch <br />And laying the nag's carcass in the ground <br />And boss Bellini, waving his smoking pistol around <br />saying "The nag is dead meat" <br />"We caint afford to carry dead weight" <br />The whole company standing about <br />Not making a sound <br />And turning to dwarves perched on the enclosure gate <br />The boss says "Bury this lump of crow bait" <br /><br />And thean the rain came <br />Everybody running for their wagons <br />Tying all the canvas flaps down <br />The mangy cats crowling in ther cages <br />The bird-girl flapping and squawking around <br />The whole valley reeking of wet beast <br />Wet beast and rotten hay <br />Freak and brute creation <br />Packed up and on their way <br /><br />The three dwarves peering from their wagon's hind <br />Moses says to Noah "We shoulda dugga deepa one" <br />Their grizzled faces like dying moons <br />Still dirty from the digging done <br /><br />And as the company passed from the valley <br />Into a higher ground <br />The rain beat on the ridge and on the meadow <br />And on the mound <br /><br />Until nothing was left, nothing at all <br />Except the body of Sorrow <br />That rose in time <br />To float upon the surface of the eaten soil <br /><br />And a murder of crows did circle round <br />First one, then the others flapping blackly down <br /><br />And the carny's van still sat upon the edge <br />Tilting slowly as the firm ground turned to sludge <br />And the rain it hammered down <br /><br />And no-one saw the carny go <br />I say it's funny how things go
