The Soul Cages

Album: The Soul Cages (1991)
Charted: 57
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  • The boy child is locked in the fisherman's yard
    There's a bloodless moon where the oceans die
    A shoal of night stars hang fire in the nest
    And the chaos of cages where the crayfish lie

    Where is the fisherman, where is the goat,
    Where is the keeper in his carrion coat?
    Eclipse on the moon when the dark bird flies
    Where is the child with his father's eyes?

    He's the king of the ninth world
    The twisted son of the fog bells' toll
    In each and every lobster cage, a tortured human soul
    These are the souls of the broken factories
    The subject slaves of the broken crown
    The dead accounting of old guilty promises
    These are the souls of the broken town
    These are the soul cages
    These are the soul cages
    These are the soul cages
    These are the soul cages

    'I have a wager,' the brave child spoke
    The fisherman laughed though disturbed at the joke
    'You will drink what I drink
    But you must equal me,
    And if the drink leaves me standing,
    A soul shall go free'

    'I have here a cask of most magical wine
    A vintage that blessed every ship in the line
    It's wrung from the blood of the sailors who died
    Young white bodies adrift in the tide'

    'And what's in it for me, my pretty young thing?
    Why should I whistle when the caged bird sings?
    If you lose a wager with the king of the sea
    You'll spend the rest of forever in the cage with me'
    These are the soul cages
    These are the soul cages
    These are the soul cages
    These are the soul cages

    A body lies open in the fisherman's yard like
    The side of a ship where the iceberg rips
    One less soul in the soul cages
    One last curse on the fisherman's lips

    These are the soul cages
    These are the soul cages
    These are the soul cages
    These are the soul cages
    These are the soul cages

    And he dreamed of a ship on the sea
    It would carry his father and he
    To a place they could never be found
    To a place far away from this town
    A Newcastle ship with no coals
    They would sail to the island of souls Writer/s: GORDON SUMNER
    Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
    Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

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