My father had a Randall knife My mother gave it to him When he went off to World War II To save us all from ruin Now if you've ever held a Randall knife You'll know my father well And if a better blade was ever made It was probably forged in hell My father was a good man He was a lawyer by his trade And only once did I ever see Him misuse the blade Well, it almost cut his thumb off When he took it for a tool The knife was made for darker things You could not bend the rules Well, he let me take it camping once On a Boy Scout jamboree And I broke a half an inch off Trying to stick it in a tree Well, I hid it from him for a while But the knife and he were one He put it in his bottom drawer Without a hard word one There it slept and there it stayed For 20 some odd years Sort of like Excalibur Except waiting for a tear My father died when I was 40 And I couldn't find a way to cry Not because I didn't love him Not because he didn't try Well, I'd cried for every lesser thing Whiskey, pain and beauty But he deserved a better tear And I was not quite ready So we took his ashes out to sea And poured 'em off the stern And then threw the roses in the wake Of everything we'd learned And when we got back to the house They asked me what I wanted Not the law books, not the watch I need the things he's haunted My hand burned for the Randall knife There in the bottom drawer And I found a tear for my father's life And all that it stood for