Chords for Richard Leigh (2) Live from the Bluebird Cafe

_ _ _ Just yesterday my wife and I returned from Washington DC where we were visiting some
my relatives my brother and my sister as I mentioned earlier and
_ I
Was I wanted to show her?
you know she had never seen where her husband lived or anything about him and _
I
Was a
Male husband, I think whether I just knew nothing about me came to the mail no, but I
took her to Washington and we looked around at the Smithsonian thing and we
_ You know all that, but it put me in mind as we were passing by the
Arlington National Cemetery, and I thought gosh.
I wish I could take her up there because most of my family's up there now and
_ It put me in mind of
December day
When I was 21 a blustery wintery day, I climbed this hill
In those days you couldn't drive that close to it to your graves and everything it was I mean that where I was going
Yeah, they had a little booth where you would
Tell the people who you were looking for and they'd give you a pass and they give you a map and you'd go up and
Look for your graves, and it was cold as all get out and I'd
and I'd never
never gone there before I thought you know and so I
Walked this hill and I just thought I'd never been colder in my life
And I thought of turning back, and I thought well my car is a long way off, and I think by this map
I'm almost there, and I and I walked
And I walked and suddenly things started to look familiar to me
And I thought this is strange because my parents died when I was just a little boy.
I was about not even quite three and
And
And I had the collar pulled up tightly around my neck that wind was in my face
My nose was about to fall off and and I thought gosh
I got to make quick work of this because I'm gonna die out here
you know and I and
I I looked to my right and all I could see was the back of these backs of these headstones with numbers on them
For as far as I could see
And I thought oh, it's somewhere down there and
suddenly the wind
Broke a limb loose, and it just an old dead limb came tumbling down and hit one of those
_ Indistinct white stones and burst into
50 pieces tiny little pieces
And I thought I'll walk toward that stone see what happened
And as I walked between the stones, and I got closer and closer.
I had this real feeling of energy coming
inside of me, and I I walked around the one that had that the
That limb had struck and it said
_ Marcel wife of Randolph, and I looked next to that when it said
Randolph Lee, you know
I'll be darned I'd walked right to my parents grave
and I thought
All I could say was well.
Hi.
You know I did I was so nervous by then.
It was such a magical mystical
[E] moment for me
_ And I left that was when I was 21, and I walked down the hill quite a bit warmer than I had come up
Years later.
I was sitting by my piano
and I was waiting for my
the muse to strike me, and I was hoping something would and I
Looked at some of my father's books that I keep near me always
And he was a political scientist, and he wrote a lot of about the world
And I reached up and I grabbed one and I sort of a similar magical thing happened
his
Obituary fell out and I began to read it almost clinically I did
And I read it he was an adventurer
He was an author
He was a clergyman.
He'd been a priest.
He was a colonel in the army
He and it went on and on like this, and I he was an aide to a president.
I went good grief
Said what a great man
The greatest man I never knew
_ _ And so my friend [E] Lang Martine, and I wrote this song
_ _ [C#m] _ _ [A] _ _ _
[E] _ _ [C#m] _ _ [A] _ _ _ _
_ _ [E] The greatest [A] man I never [B] knew
_ [E] Live just down the hall _ _
_ Every [C#m] day we [B] said hello _
[E] But never [C#m] touched
_ [A] He [C#m] _ _
was in his [G#m] paper [A] I _ was in my [G#] room
_ [A] How was I to know he thought I [B] hung
The [E] _ _ greatest man I never knew
[A] _
came _ [E] home late [A] every night _
[E] He never [C#m] had too much [C#] to say
[E] Too much was on his [A] mind
_ [C#m] I never really [G#m] knew him
[A] And now it seems [G#] so sad Everything
_ Everything he gave to us took all [B] he [E] had
_ _ [G#m] Then the days
[A]
Turned into years and [E] the memories do black
[E] _ _
_ _ [G#m] He grew cold [A] like an old winter wind
[E] Blowing across my [B] life _ _
_ The [C#m] greatest words [A] I never [B] heard [E] I guess [C#m] I'll never
[A] The man [E] I [C#m] thought could never die
_ [E]
Spend it [G#m] almost
_ [A] He _ [C#m] was good at [G#m] business
_ [A] There was business left to [G#] do
_ _ [A] He never said he loved me guess he thought
[B] _ _ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _ [N] _ _