Black Madonna will come down for you
With open arms and a veil to hide her face
And Black Madonna will come down for you
And there is no sickness and there is no suffering
And there is no anguish and no anger that she cannot erase

You might see Black Madonna walking between the sheets of an angry day
Or you might see her smile a strange-sad smile as she steps out of your way
Or you might not see her at all
But she might be coming down for you
With her arms spread wide and her head on fire
‘cause she sees you been down so long

There isn’t a sin that you could make that she will not forgive

But oh, Black Madonna, I did not believe her beauty
I thought I did not need her mercy
I thought I did not need
Traded my belongings and my body
My memory and my mind
My center of gravity and my sense of direction
‘til I woke up half an hour from the city
And realized I had lost all sense of the passage of time
So I don’t know if it’s been a day or a week or a year
All I know is I’m still here
And I always thought you’d lift me up
And you never did
What the fuck?

>>there isn’t a sin that you could make
That she will not forgive
No there isn’t a sin that you could make
In the ways that a stray must live

So what I wanna know is this
If you believe in everything fitting into a kind of place
If you believe that everything and everybody has a certain space they fit into—babies entering into a welcoming world in jubilant curls of star gazing wonder
And the sick yes even the sick just a shuffling into sleep’s dark brother
And the sleepers in the sleet
The heaps in the street
Nestled under trestles for to get a little heat
And if the trestles watch over the sleepers
And if life ushers her lucky winners
Through fleshy gates to four star dinners
And if sleep ushers his population
To plug into the dream life radio station
And if thin souls whose bodies haven’t wrecked them
Walk smoky streets that know and expect them
Then what I want to know is this—
What of strays who have turned their backs on the god of strays?

>>what of strays who’ve turned their backs
On the god of strays, yeah, what of them?

Oh Black Madonna I was thinking about the days that I spent with you
‘cause now I doze and daze and drown
And cling to the wreckage of a sinking town
And I walk your dire streets in search of anything that’s still pure
‘cause I once thought you watched over me
But now I’m not so sure