The Courier - The Happy Family

I’m carrying the voices again

Don’t believe just comply

Double crossing between here and Hades

The two jaws of a lie

I’m just back from the underworld

I was signing my name

In the book of my ancestors

By the light of the flames

Between the rhythms of the living that I scratch

I meet the dead and they dictate their latest plans

I listen wide-eyed to the plans they’d like to hatch

They’re all reactionary, they’re Tories to a man

They’d like to cancel each advance since time began

And they sing: The errors we made, the mistakes that led us here

To save us getting lonely these must never disappear

Murderers and merchants, assassinations, wars

To wrap these vicious circles round the globe

That’s what we need a courier for

Got my critical faculties but

Hell doesn’t pay me to care

I’ve got the rights to my services

And I can take them elsewhere

(But where?)

I’m just back from the underworld

Found a mission that’s right

Hell’s rewarding me handsomely

So I’m paid on both sides

They showed me likenesses of the man my mother wed T H E CO U R I E R

Who won and windfall and a landslide at the polls

A man of principle after our hearts they said

He sent his speeches out to roost in vacant souls

Like rooks his thoughts will hover on

When he wings his way below

And they sing:

The errors we made, the mistakes that led us here

To save us getting lonely these must never disappear

Murderers and merchants, assassinations, wars

To wrap these vicious circles round the globe

That’s what we need a courier for

I’m a mixture of bloodtypes

I serve a couple of kings

On the horns of a hundred dilemmas

I’m being torn from limb to limb

I’m just back from the underworld

They say my progress is good

If I continue untrustworthy, devious

My admission’s assured

Hell’s a manner of speaking

Hell’s a gleam in our eye

It’s the way we get on in this world

Not where we go when we die

We all carry a language, we all carry a love

To keep them sublime to the end of the line

Please say that’s enough