The cider press creaks in the orchard gloom
Its wooden teeth full of summer's perfume
His hands still stained with the blossom's ghost
He counts the hives like a trembling host
The scep wears frost like a widow's lace
The honey long gone from its hollowed space
While down in the village the church bells
hum Of merchants' gold and the hive's struck
dumb
Oh,
the last bees cling to the queen's faint song
Their wings grown frail, their dawn's gone wrong
The fiddle weeps where the apples fell
A bitter tune that the hives know well
Sing keepers,
sing through the frozen wire Some lights go out with the dying fire
She came from town with a chemist's bill
Her pockets lined with a farmer's ill
Left a silver spoon in the empty cone And
a child's drawing of their vanished home
Now the accordion wheezes a counting rhyme
As he burns the dead in the harvest time
The new bees sleep in their factory frames
Strange angels bearing their mothers'
names
Oh,
the last bees cling to the queen's
faint song Their wings grown frail,
their dawn's gone wrong
The fiddle weeps where the apples fell A bitter
tune that the hives know well Sing keepers,
sing through the frozen wire Some lights go out with the dying fire
The vicar preaches a plague's divine
The landlord dines on Italian wine
The hawthorn blooms but the nectar
lies A poison gift from altered skies
Oh,
the bees don't know of the deeds of men
They only know that the flowers won't mend
Now the cider turns to vinegar sharp
The empty hives just hollowed art
The
child asks why the honey's gone As a
single bee dies on the windowsill alone
And
far past the orchard where the wild things thrive
The last true swarm keeps the old ways alive
The vicar preaches a plague's divine
The landlord dines on Italian wine
The hawthorn blooms but the nectar
lies A poison gift from altered skies
Oh,
the bees don't know of the deeds of men
They only know that the flowers won't mend
Now the cider turns to vinegar sharp
The empty hives just hollowed art