Under the ruins of a walled city
Crumbling towers and beams of yellow light
No flags of truce,
no cries of pity The siege guns have been pounding through the
night It took a day to build a city
We walked through its streets in the afternoon
As I returned across the fields I'd known
I recognized the walls that I'd once
made Had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I'd laid
And if I've built this fortress around your heart
There's circles,
you'll hear trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge,
or I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire
Then I went off to fight some battle
That I'd invented inside my head
I wished so long for years and years You
probably thought or even wished that I was dead
While the
armies all are sleeping Beneath the tattered flag we'd made
I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I'd laid
And if I've built this fortress around your heart
There's circles,
you'll hear trenches and barbed wire
Then let me set the battlements on fire
And
prisoners now become your home
A sentence you seemed prepared to pay
It took a day to build a city We walked
through its streets in the afternoon
As I returned across the lands I'd known I
recognized the fields where I'd once played
Had to stop in my tracks for fear Of walking on the mines I'd laid
And if I've built this
fortress around your heart There's circles,
you'll hear trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge,
or I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire