Touch Of Darkness

Lyrics: Robert Hunter
Music: Robert Hunter

Sometimes appears in Robert Hunter setlists as "Momentary Madness" or "Ask No Questions".

Why does the rain fall
Or the salt wind blow?
If you don't ask
You may never know

Ask no questions
You'll still hear lies
From the well intentioned
With stardust in their eyes

How good of you to love me
When my heart had been struck dumb
And the poisons of my anger
Dripped stacato like a drum

How good of you to know me
When to touch me was to shame
Yourself in front of everyone
In some obscure way to share my blame

Now if I seem ungrateful
And my face a little hard
It's only that we both know
Virtue was its own reward

In some cemetery midnight
Underneath a wreath of rock
A living man awakens
And surveys his tomb in shock

How often do the dead wake
We thought were safely buried
With their secrets which would shake
The wind on which they're carried

With the shabby guilt and weakness
Under which we all do live
That denounce you in the darkness
How dare you not forgive?

With each night so fully wretched
And its dawn so far from born
You slip so close to darkness
You could shake it by the horn

When morning does revive you
It revives a little less
Of your hatred and your sorrow
Your worst and of your best

Some may steal the prisons
That we leave because we go
If they fare ill or well there
It's not ours to care or know

Mmm ... little touch of darkness
Dark and the deeper shades of gray
Mmm ... momentary madness
This, too, will pass away