My grandmother sang a lullaby the night her husband diedI was four and didn't know the words, just felt them in her sideA lullaby is just a map drawn in the key of lovePointing every lost grandchild back to where they're fromI used to roll my eyes at the proverbs that she'd sayNow they fall out of my mouth at the end of every dayOld songsAnh em như thể tay chânWe are hands and feet of one same body, one same bloodOld songs don't die, they just wait for the next mouthThe melody is patient, it just waits to be passed downThe week we buried her I couldn't find the tune at allThen my own son hummed it in his sleep down the hallEvery wedding, every funeral, the same notes come aroundThe thread that holds the family is woven out of soundI didn't understand it when I had it all for freeNow I'm the one that's humming it, so the young will carry meSo I wrote the lullaby down for a boy who doesn't knowThat his great-grandmother sang it sixty years agoBecause a song is how a family talks across the yearsIt's how the gone keep singing in the living ones who hearOld songsAnh em như thể tay chânWe are hands and feet of one same body, one same bloodOld songs don't die, they just wait for the next mouth
