Fortress Around Your Heart

Under the ruins of a walled city

Crumbling towers in beams of yellow light

No flags of truce, no cries of pity

The siege guns had been pounding through the night

It took a day to build the city

We walked through its streets in the afternoon

As I returned across the fields I'd known

I recognized the walls that I'd once made

Had to stop in my tracks for fear

Of walking on the mines I'd laid

And if I've built this fortress around your heart

Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire

Then let me build a bridge, for I cannot fill the chasm

And let me set the battlements on fire

Then I went off to fight some battle

That I'd invented inside my head

Away so long for years and years

You probably thought, or even wished that I was dead

While the armies all are sleeping

Beneath the tattered flag we'd made

I had to stop in my tracks for fear

Of walking on the mines I'd laid

And if I have built this fortress around your heart

Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire

Then let me build a bridge, for I cannot fill the chasm

And let me set the battlements on fire

This prison has now become your home

A sentence you seem prepared to pay

It took a day to build the city

We walked through its streets in the afternoon

As I returned across the lands I'd known

I recognized the fields where I'd once played

I had to stop in my tracks for fear

Of walking on the mines I'd laid

And if I've built this fortress around your heart

Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire

Then let me build a bridge, for I cannot fill the chasm

And let me set the battlements on fire