Rooks & Ravens (1981 electric original)

The prisons, the prisons, the prisons, the prisons were full
And the chains were all taken
And silence was bought in the passage of time
And the wolves on the hills howled for the forsaken
Who, painted in glory, came bonded and shaken
Stood shackled and shambling and nailed to the vine
Like old friends of mine

And the sky lost its light to an overcast evening
When criminal corporals stood spitting out pips
And the rain pounded down on a sergeant whose dreaming
Seemed only to stretch to the stutter and screaming
Of the two Smith & Wessons that hung from his hips
From the smile on his lips

All the mirth and the mercy in slumber were sleeping
To no-one's amazement, or even surprise
And deep in the darkness the wails of the weeping
Lie drowned in the sound of the blue lightning leaping
Out from the dark of the Judge's blue eyes
That all mercy defies

Oh, the circus parades in its bells and its leather
Its clowns and its jugglers ride the trapeze
And with smiles and with sentences tumbled together
The honey pot glistens, the bear slips its tether
And all that is heard is the buzz of the bees
In the high galleries

So the sentence is spoken with scarcely a quiver
A few weighted words in the balance of trade
And who will deny he suppresses a shiver?
Whilst ever the factory can fail to deliver
The meat is marooned on the edge of the blade
'Til an ace has been played

So the lessons have ended, and the college stays shuttered
And the churches have closed on the wayward divine
On the solid gold statues and the dirges they muttered
As they danced in the light of the candles that guttered
The rooks and the ravens stayed hard to define
Like old friends of mine