D Em My father had a Randall knife, my mother gave it to him A G D When he went off to WWII to save us all from ruin D Em Now if you've ever held a Randall knife, you know my father well A G D If a better blade was ever made, it was probably forged in hell [Verse 2] D Em My father was a good man, he was a lawyer by his trade A G D And only once did I ever see him misuse the blade D Em Well, it almost cut his thumb off when he took it for a tool A G D Ah, the knife was made for darker things and could not bend the rules [Verse 3] D Em He let me take it camping once on a Boy Scout jamboree A G D And I broke a half an inch off trying to stick it in a tree D Em I hid it from him for a while but the knife and he were one A G D He put it in his bottom drawer without a hard word one [Verse 4] D Em And there it slept and there it stayed For twenty some odd years A G D Sort of like Excalibur except waiting for a tear [Verse 5] D Em My father died when I was forty and I couldn't find a way to cry A G D Not because I didn't love him not and not because he didn't try D Em I'd cried for every lesser thing, for Whiskey, pain and beauty A G D But he deserved a better tear and I was not quite ready [Verse 6] D Em So we took his ashes out to sea and poured 'em off the stern A G D And threw the roses in the wake of everything we'd learned D Em And when we got back to the house, they asked me what I wanted A G D Not the lawbooks, not the watch, I need the things he's haunted [Verse 7] D Em My hand burned for the Randall knife there in the bottom drawer A G D And I found a tear for my father's life and all that it stood for