Tales Of The Road

The caravan flipped over two, three times
Went spinning down the carriageway
Breaking up into splinters
Wheels turning around in the dust at the foot of the hill
And all the old clothes, the pots and pans and the photographs
The little things of those people's lives
Strewn across the road
We just want what we cannot have
We've driven so far, we can never get back
Sitting in the all night cafe in a curl of smoke
Telling tales of the road
By the glow of a flickering lighter
We went stumbling forward through the corridor
Up the broken stairway to the top of the trail of shattered glass
Damp mattresses in the doorway, an old abandoned take-away
Nothing much to tell us if and where you'd gone
By now you could be miles away
We all want what we cannot have
We've driven so far that we can't get back
Sitting in the all night cafe in a curl of smoke
Telling tales of the road
And everyone just keeps moving on, you turn around and find them gone
The lights go out one by one, the prodigal son is not coming home
Down at the ferrybridge junction
Beneath the cooling towers a man stood hitching a ride
And in the long grass at the side of the road his son was laid asleep
He said - nothing's left to keep us in the city where we come from
Take us far away from here - looking for work and the wishing-well
This afternoon the sunlight spilled shadows across the golden hills
They searched us at the border but they're not looking for what we're hiding
They're not looking for what we're hiding
We all want what we cannot have
So far gone that we can't get back
Sitting in the all night cafe in a curl of smoke
Telling tales of the road