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                    (NC)         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                       1  1  1  1  1  1             (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