White Hinterland - Hung On A Thin Thread Lyrics

Come along in my mackinaw
I'll point you where you need to go
Though our path may bend and yaw
You won't get lost

With my pointed prow and square stern
We'll use our arms for oars
To spoor little schools of fish
Make festoon-shaped grooves in the fickle waves
‘Til the howling wind ushers us to leave

Out at sea for days
I sleep most afternoons away
And you anxiously compass us
‘Til we see land

But the land we knew
Was now a new landscape
And the howling wind ushered us to leave
But you wanted a closer look

Then gripped to the rail, how our cheeks turned pale
To see the flying machines near clip the houses
And throw kisses to the sandbar

Little tendrils of smoke trailing out of the exhaust
In parabolic wakes, swooping low like gulls
Causing the town to tremor and to shake
It was clear that city was nothing
But an aluminium piece of junk

Oh, and the howling wind ushered us to leave
But we couldn't move we stood forever changed
When something ends, something has to begin

When the filaments of fiber
From their flares caught afire
Your hair looked like spark on a wire
I would have paid my last dollar
To see you lambent like that
Lit by the light of ten thousand shackled suns
Being hung on a thin thread

Sift amongst the debris for half-hearted dreams
Remnants of pocket change
Pretty, frilly, thrown-away things

Gauze and dust and shards of glass
Bricks and bended straws and greyhounds' teeth
And the howling wind ushered us to leave