There was a boy who came into this world   At the hands of a holy woman in a holy place   He wore a red coat and walked a bulldog   Saw them reflected in the mirror of the lakes      Lived in the shadow of the mountains   With the smells of disinfectant   Dusty old leather and the polished wood of his bed      No more than a baby feeding swans on the river   Holding the hands of his mother   And the wax paper bag of yesterday's bread      And his father on the other side of the world   On the ship's railings and some far away tide   With the silent dry tear of home thoughts from abroad   In his far away eyes, in his far away eyes      The smell of the wax on the wooden floor   Mixture of polish and soap   No children to fear or to play with   Rows of empty hooks for the coats      An upright piano and the boys in the choir   Still remind him of just before he was born   Remind him of just before he was breathing   Strange misty visions of God      Turn the cities into families, into villages of souls   Hovering in the air while they're sleeping   With their houses invisible   Send to me the ghosts of Christmas   Whispering, "You're the only one"      And ever since I was a boy   I never felt that I belonged   Like everything they did to me   Was an experiment to see      How I would cope with the illusion?   In which direction would I jump   Would I do it all the same   As the actors in the game?      Or would I spit it back at them   And not get caught up in their rules?   And live according to my own   And not be used, not be used      To find the fundamental truths   It was going to take some time   Thirty five summers down the line      The wisdom of each passing year   Seems to serve only to confuse   Seems to serve only to confuse      Daddy came out the navy and took us   Away to his dirty gray hometown   And he worked down on a coal mine for National Service   So that he could be around      There was a magical purple in the chrome   Of the exhaust of his Triumph motorbike   And a warmth of oil and metal and the thrill   Of the hard corner holding tight      From the horizon came home from the navy to the mine   From the horizon to buried alive   Took his dream underground   Buried his treasure in his faraway eyes      And one day as the boy lay sleeping   In the sunshine of a half remembered afternoon   A cloud of bees with no particular aim and no brain   Found the boy, decided that his time had come      Came down out of the sky, stung him in the face   Again and again, blue pain, screaming like baptism   Intravenous Jesus like being chosen   Something with no brain, blue pain   It's happening again, it's happening again      Oh, Mummy, Daddy, will you sit a while with me?   Oh Mummy, Daddy, will you jog my memory?   Tell me tall tales of Montego Bay, table mountain   Flying fish, banana spiders, pots of paint      And the sun on the equator   Setting like an ember thrown to deep water   From crimson to black   But coming back tomorrow on the horizon      The blue pain fades to a point   Where it doesn't fade, it stayed blue   And stirred his red coat heart to this strange engine   This love, this love      This love, this inconvenient   Blind, blood-diamond, this puzzle      This love, this blind, blood-diamond   This puzzle I don't understand   That knows no faith and tries   And fails and tries again      Stares at the sea   The night's dark deep   For one last time and bleeds   And bleeds and dies for you      And lies and is to blame   And is ashamed   And is not the same   And is true, is true   Is true, is true and lies   [Incomprehensible] Is true