Skip to content
Bruce Springsteen Letter To You album front cover
Track

Song For Orphans

Label
Columbia Records
Release Date
23 October 2020
Lyrics

The multitude assembled and tried to make the noise
The black blind poet generals and restless loud white boys
Times grew thin and the axis grew somehow incomplete
Where instead of child lions
We had aging junkie sheep
How many wasted have I seen signed “Hollywood or bust”
They’re left to ride them ever-ghostly Arizona gusts
Cheerleader tramps and kids with big amps
Sounding in the void
High society vamps, ex-heavyweight champs
Mistaking soot for soil

So break me now Big Mama, as Old Faithful breaks the day
Believe me, my good Linda, the aurora will shine your way
The confederacy is in my name now
The hounds are held at bay
The axis needs a stronger arm
Do you feel your muscles play

Well the doorstep blanket weaver
Madonna pushes bells
From house to house I see her
Givin’ last kisses and wishin’ well
To every gypsy mystic hero
That the kids might find a place
Who’ve been lost forever to mom and pop
On their weekends out in space

Well sons, they search for fathers
But their fathers are all gone
The lost souls search for saviors
But saviors don’t last long
Those nameless, questless renegade brats
Who live their lives in songs
They run the length of a candle
With a goodnight whisper then they’re gone

So break me now Big Mama, as Old Faithful breaks the day
Believe me, my good Linda, the aurora will shine your way
The confederacy is in my name now
The hounds are held at bay
The axis needs a stronger arm
Do you feel your muscles play

The missions are filled with hermits looking for a friend
The terraces are filled with cat-men, just lookin’ for a way in
There’s orphans junked on silver mountains
Lost in celestial alleyways
They wait for that old tramp dog man Moses
He takes in all the strays

Now don’t you grow on empty legends
Or lonely cradle songs
Billy The Kid was just a bowery boy
Who made his living twirling his guns
The night, she’s long and lanky,
And she speaks in a mother tongue
She lullabies the refugees with an amplifier’s hum

So break me now Big Mama, as Old Faithful breaks the day
Believe me, my good Linda, the aurora will shine your way
The confederacy is in my name now
The hounds are held at bay
The axis needs a stronger arm
Do you feel your muscles play

The confederacy is in my name now
And the hounds are held at bay
The axis needs a stronger arm
Do you feel your muscles play