The Soul Cages

The boy child islocked in the fisherman`s yard<br>There`s a bloodless moon where the oceans die<br>A shoal of night stars hang fire in the nets<br>And the chaos of cages where the crayfish lie<br><br>Where is the fisherman, where is the goat,<br>Where is the keeper in his carrion coat?<br>Eclipse on the moon when the dark bird flies<br>Where is the child with his father`s eyes?<br><br>He`s the king of the ninth world<br>The twisted son of the fog bells` toll<br>In each and every lobster cage, a tortured human soul<br>These are the souls of the broken factories<br>The subject slaves of the broken crown<br>The dead accounting of old guilty promises<br>These are the souls of the broken town<br>These are the soul cages<br>These are the soul cages<br>These are the soul cages<br>These are the soul cages<br><br>`I have a wager,` the brave child spoke<br>The fisherman laughed though disturbed at the joke<br>`You will drink what I drink<br>But you must equal me,<br>And if the drink leaves me standing,<br>A soul shall go free`<br><br>`I have here a cask of most magical wine<br>A vintage that blessed every ship in the line<br>It`s wrung from the blood of the sailors who died<br>Young white bodies adrift in the tide`<br><br>`And what`s in it for me, my pretty young thing?<br>Why should I whistle when the caged bird sings?<br>If you lose a wager with the king of the sea<br>You`ll spend the rest of forever in the cage with me`<br>These are the soul cages<br>These are the soul cages<br>These are the soul cages<br>These are the soul cages<br><br>A body lies open in the fisherman`s yard like <br>The side of a ship where the iceberg rips<br>One less soul in the soul cages<br>One last curse on the fisherman`s lips<br><br>These are the soul cages<br>These are the soul cages<br>These are the soul cages<br>These are the soul cages<br>These are the soul cages<br><br>And he dreamed of a ship on the sea<br>It would carry his father and he<br>To a place they could never be found<br>To a place far away from this town<br>A Newcastle ship with no coals<br>They would sail to the island of souls