In the little town of Candor in the last year of my youth   I learned the final lesson of the levels to the truth   My father was a farmer he'd go tilling in the ground   My mother was a neighbor she'd go visiting around      But I didn't care   For I had found the answer to a plowboy's lonely prayer   She was the daughter of the Mayor      The Mayor fought my courtship for he'd made other plans   He saw her married to a better man than a boy with farmer's hands   I said, I hate your father, it's so hard not to strike him   She said, you know I love you because you're so much like him      And so I'd go sneaking in the evening   And there she'd stand a crying in the dawn as I was leaving      But the Mayor of Candor lied   When he offered me his only daughter   The Mayor of Candor tried   To take her across the water   What a thing to do to a young man in love   What a thing to do to your daughter      One day with father on his tractor and mother off again   I go to find the mayor and work out what I can   But he is not at his office, he is not at his home   When I find him in the countryside he is not alone      He is holding a woman and imagine my surprise   As she jumps back from his arms, I look into my mother's eyes      All my thoughts of outrage, embarrassment and pain   Were washed away by what came roaring through my brain   The Mayor's at my mercy and I hear my own voice say   Your run for re-election is just one month away      And the world will never know of what I've seen here, sir   But I'll be with your daughter, is my meaning clear?      My mother looks in horror at the compromise we made   But the Mayor's rueful smile says the piper must be paid   I had a month of joy in heaven from this deal I'd made in hell   What was to happen then my friend a prophet could not tell      The day after his re-election and the victory celebration   The Mayor takes his family on a month long foreign vacation      Oh Coleen, you know how much I love you   There is no one I'd ever place above you   Oh Coleen, you don't even know me   To have you there's nothing that's below me      But time always passes after all   And as the summer follows spring so does the winter follow fall      The day that they return I stand waiting on the road   I watch the car drive up, I watch the passengers unload   Of course she isn't there, of course I should have known   The Mayor says that she has stayed, the decision was her own      I spit out my hatred and my fury at his lies   When he says you tried to blackmail me, you're just as bad as I   He says, go and do your damndest, throw your mother to the streets   You know it's been too many years, I had to be discreet      And as he stands there saying we're just two of a kind   It hits me like a thunderbolt exploding in my mind      As I look into his leering aged wrinkled mirror of my own face   He laughs and sneers and says, of course dear son   Where do you think you came from in the first place?      The Mayor of Candor lied   When he offered me his only daughter   The Mayor of Candor tried   To take her across the water   What a thing to do to a young man in love   What a thing to do to your daughter