The Soul Cages

The boy child is locked in the fisherman's yard
There's a bloodless moon where the oceans die
A shoal of night stars hang fire in the nets
And the chaos of cages where the crayfish lie

Where is the fisherman, where is the goat,
Where is the keeper in his carrion coat?
Eclipse on the moon when the dark bird flies
Where is the child with his father's eyes?

He's the king of the ninth world
The twisted son of the fog bells' toll
In each and every lobster cage, a tortured human soul
These are the souls of the broken factories
The subject slaves of the broken crown
The dead accounting of old guilty promises
These are the souls of the broken town
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages

'I have a wager,' the brave child spoke
The fisherman laughed though disturbed at the joke
'You will drink what I drink
But you must equal me,
And if the drink leaves me standing,
A soul shall go free'

'I have here a cask of most magical wine
A vintage that blessed every ship in the line
It's wrung from the blood of the sailors who died
Young white bodies adrift in the tide'

'And what's in it for me, my pretty young thing?
Why should I whistle when the caged bird sings?
If you lose a wager with the king of the sea
You'll spend the rest of forever in the cage with me'
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages

A body lies open in the fisherman's yard like
The side of a ship where the iceberg rips
One less soul in the soul cages
One last curse on the fisherman's lips

These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages

And he dreamed of a ship on the sea
It would carry his father and he
To a place they could never be found
To a place far away from this town
A Newcastle ship with no coals
They would sail to the island of souls