This strange engine

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 (NC) Send to me the ghosts of Christmas, whispering, "You're the only one" Measure 1: e-|-----------------------------| B-|-----------------------------| G-|-----------------------------| D-|-1-3-------1-3-------1-0-----| A-|-------------------------3-1-| E-|-----1-1-1-----1-1-1---------| 1 1 1 And ever since I was a boy, I never felt that I belonged 1 1 Like everything they did to me was an experiment to see 1 1 How I would cope with the illusion, in which direction would I jump 1 1 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 gonna 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 (NC) Daddycame out of the navy and took us away to his dirty grey home town And he worked down 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 motor bike 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 from 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, is true, is true, is true, is true, is true