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lyrics

Fifteen beds. Fifteen charts with names.
Fifteen people without a family tree.
Fifteen bodies for whom torture is medicine and pills,
Beds over which the crimson blood of ages spills.
Fifteen bodies which want to live here.
Thirty eyes, seeking quietness.
Bald heads which gape, out of the prison.
The holiness of the suffering, which is none of my business.

The loveliness of air, which day by day
Smells of strangeness and carbolic,
The nurses which carry thermometers
Mothers who grope after a smile.
Food is such a luxury here.
A long, long night, and a brief day.

But anyway, I don't want to leave
The lighted rooms and the burning cheeks,
Nurses who leave behind them only a shadow
To help the little sufferers.

I'd like to stay here, a small patient,
Waiting the doctor's daily round,
Until, after a long, long time, I'd be well again.

Then I'd like to live
And go back home again.

Anonymous

credits

from I Never Saw Another Butterfly (1991), released September 9, 2017

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about

Thomas Oboe Lee Cambridge, Massachusetts

Thomas Oboe Lee was born in China in 1945. He lived in São Paulo, Brazil, for six years before coming to the United States in 1966. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, he studied composition at the New England Conservatory and Harvard University. He has been a member of the music faculty at Boston College since 1990. ... more

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