Understanding / Forgiveness (part 2)

From Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrows) by John Prine

For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter
You'll become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there
Wrapped up in a trap of your very own
Chain of sorrow

My heart's in the ice house, come hill or come valley
Like a long ago Sunday when I walked through the alley
On a cold winter's morning to a church house
Just to shovel some snow

I heard sirens on the train track howl naked, gettin' neutered
An altar boy's been hit by a local commuter
Just from walking with his back turned
To the train that was coming so slow

You can gaze out the window, get mad and get madder
Throw your hands in the air, say "What does it matter?"
But it don't do no good to get angry
So help me, I know

I used to work at this Episcopal Church
When I was like thirteen years old
I was saving money for a guitar
And I’d go in on weekends and dust the pews up
‘Cause round about then, a lot of people started going to church
So the pews would get real dusty

And I’d wax the cross up, vacuum the carpet
And clean up the cup they put the wine in
Religion kind of lost its magic for me
I was a roadie for god

In the wintertime they used to call me up early on Sunday morning
To come get the snow out, off the walk in front of the church
‘Cause if one of the congregation fell and busted their ass
They’d sue the church for all the money they’d given it
All those years

And I used to have to go in pretty early
About five thirty, six o’clock on Sunday morning
To take care of the snow, I always thought it was a real
Strange time of the day, particularly on a Sunday morning
You normally see people are out late from Saturday night
Or else people really had a job on Sunday morning
Like a newsboy or altar boy or a bunch of people like that

I seen, I was going over one Sunday morning
And this kid who was going over to a Catholic church
This altar boy, he got hit by a train
He was just kind of screwing around, walking down the track
Looking at his shoes and
He got hit, he was a pretty bad mess

And there was about six or seven mothers around the scene of the accident
They didn’t know where their sons were at the time
They didn’t know who had gotten hit
And it took about fifteen, twenty minutes to identify him
I always remember, like, the look on one mother’s, on the other mother’s faces
Not the ones that, the others had a big sigh of relief
And they tried to comfort the other one but they were too relieved
To be very comforting

– John Prine