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 nest 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
