The farmer's wife cooks at the window in that small cottage under the willow

Over the river, so freezing, so cold

In that white house up on the hill

Where a man saw a way out, and took it he did

A family moved in, I don't think they know

A fox peeks inside the house. It smells warm iron in the chilly wind. As it walks in, it crouches behind a wall. A man inside the room weeps, straddling the corpse of his dead wife. The fox, curious, accidentally knocks over a vase. Before it can react, the barrel of a gun is pointing at its face.

And the blackberry juice drips like blood on the leaves

And the blood on the fox drips like dew from its teeth

And the dew in the field falls like petals, so sweet

And the petals they fall and turn brown at my feet

And the rhythms of autumn wash over me, ah

The fox wakes up. It recognizes the man and the woman. Jumping over the lifeless arm that still holds the gun, it sniffs the air. And then the ground. Finding the enticing scent of warm meat, it rips through clothes and garments with its teeth. And it bites. And it swallows. And it learns. And it grows.

When I return from the city to home

I pass by the churchyard, he's standing alone

That elderly man whose wife I did know

Her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother too

All sleep side-by-side beneath the green dew

That elderly man thinks that he'll join them soon

And the apples they fall like the shells from the guns

And the shotgun, it misses the hare when he runs

And he moves like the wind with cold air in his lungs

And his little warm heart beats in fear like a drum

And the night, it draws in like the hand that will fall

With its scythe and black curtain make tombs of us all

And the sun's little visits are starting to shorten

And the village it lives through the rhythms of autumn

And the creatures die at the hand of those who kill

And the leaves will decay by the winters that chill

And some will pass on by their own desperate will

Just like that man in the white house on the hill

And the blackberry juice drips like blood on the leaves

And the blood on the fox drips like dew from its teeth

And the dew in the field falls like petals, so sweet

And the petals they fall and turn brown at my feet