Look Backward on You Future, Look Forward to Your Past - Bonnie "Prince" Billy

Richard was a stout-hearted man, he’d been through the bulk of his life

He no longer spoke to most of his folks and was abandoned by his wife

Rolling down the road one night alone, he came upon a terrible sight

An older woman lay bleeding in the road and her screams about filled the night

She said: Look backwards on your future and look forward to your past

Everything upon which you base your faith is made of vapour and it won’t last

It’s only everything in our shared reality that keeps our souls held fast

So, look backwards on your future and look forward to your past

Richard woke the next morning and spoke, he said, there’s something I feel I

must do

He called up all of his natural born kids and all his money from the bank he

withdrew

He changed his mind about everything he’d ever felt about what’s bad and good

He fixed a loud-speaker to the roof of his car and he sang to everyone he could

He sang: Look backwards on your future and look forward to your past

Get your sense of time from the ancient Hawaiians, your sense of self from the

hydrogen blast

You’ll be what came before, you were what is to come, he bellowed out to

everyone he passed

So, look backwards on your future and look forward to your past

Richard got arrested in Laredo, he was causing too much mischief for the sisters

He spent an evening in the clink and then went home and turned to drinking —

gave his all, yes, he was a double-fister

The issue was the kind of past he had behind him, most of what he’d spent were

wasted days

The history he faced was an ocean made of empty and a destiny you wouldn’t want

to save

Still, I say: Look backwards on your future and look forward to your past

If you haven’t gone and made a mess of yourself you just might end up with the

last laugh

Every little dot of presence and thought for another will give your life class

So, look backwards on your future and look forward to your past

This particular assemblage of molecules and memories some day soon may just

soon run out of gas

So, look backwards on your future and look forward to your past