Nora - Richard Shindell

New York has been buried in snow since last Saturday

The papers said the storm had passed over you

Thank you for the play you wrote about Heloise

And her injury at the hand of an almighty memory

And I might have guessed you’d press

A rose in the pages

Where Abelard confesses

His love and his pain

To her lips

And Nora, it was no sin

They could turn the other cheek

And take it on the chin

But Nora, it was no sin

So Christmas was as blue for you as it was for me

All those angels trumpeting their ecstasy

Your husband has accepted the parish in Greenland

I met him drowning his vows at the bar

And there we raised

The first and the next

And a third glass to you

Hunched on our bar-stools

Calling our truce

By your name

And Nora, there is no sin

We can turn the other cheek

And take it on the chin

But Nora, there is no sin

Nora, there is no sin

Nora, there is no sin