"When You Arrive" lyrics - BRUCE COCKBURN

Breakfast was Mahler and coffee
Dinner's Lightnin' Hopkins and rye
Everything you say comes back to bite you
These days only beauty makes you cry

The chapel is closed for the COVID
Black mold owns the city by the sea
Dew-beaded cobweb in the moonlight-
Halo for a saint who's yet to be

[Chorus:]
And the dead shall sing
To the living and the semi-alive
Bells will ring
When you arrive

[Instrumental break]

You're limping like a three-legged canine
Backbone creaking like a cheap shoe
Dragging the accretions of a lifetime
But you oughta make another mile or two

[Chorus:]
And the dead shall sing
To the living and the semi-alive
Bells will ring
When you arrive
The dead shall sing
To the living and the semi-alive
Bells will ring
When you arrive
The dead shall sing
To the living and the semi-alive
Bells will ring
When you arrive
I said, the dead shall sing
To the living and the semi-alive
Bells will ring
When you arrive (One more time now)
The dead shall sing
To the living and the semi-alive
Bells will ring
When you arrive
When you arrive