Down in the garden district

Where the plants grow strong and tall

Behind the bush there lurks a girl

Who makes them strong and tall



Villagers call her: quicklime girl

Behind her back: quicklime girl

Behind the bush: quicklime girl

She's the mistress of the salmon salt: quicklime girl



In the fall when plants return

By harvest time, she knows the score

Ripe and ready to the eye

But rotten somehow to the core



Villagers call her: quicklime girl

Behind her back: quicklime girl

Behind the bush: quicklime girl

She's the mistress of the salmon salt: quicklime girl



A harvest of life, or harvest of death

One body of life, one body of death

And when you've gone and choked to death

With laughter and a little step

I'll prepare the quicklime, friend

For your ripe and ready grave



It's springtime now and cares subside

And the planting's almost done

And fertile graves, it seems, exist

Within a mile of that duke's joint

Where coast guard crews still take their leave

Lying listless in the sun

And the quick lime girl still plies her trade

The reduction of the many from the one



And they call her: quicklime girl

Behind her back: quicklime girl

Behind the bush: quicklime girl

She's the mistress of the salmon salt: quicklime girl



A harvest of life, a harvest of death

Resumes it's course each day

Because it exists by schedule

A harvest to live, _____________________

And those that crawl, and those that chirp

And next life's swans that seem to turn