let the truth sting - david gray

The hour is out of joint
Black sun has risen
And the river of words
Is flowing on through
The cages of tradition
They're handing out emptiness
We'll take it, cos it's given
Free with this plastic innocence
And these standards of living

Questions, lighted questions
Burnin' holes into my head
Hanging like shadows o'er the sun
Staring out like the eyes of the dead
And sometimes my soul flickers
As the wind of change blows cold
Over the mire of repetition
Down the corridors of rigmarole

What I say, what I think
What I put down in ink
I'm only tryin' to find a way to understand
And I mean no harm
I'm just searching for calm
In the storm of mankind

Do you find it there
In the sea of faces
That drowns you every day
Or in the silence and rubble and empty spaces
Where children and rottweilers play
Is it buried in the praise
Given so cheap
With a meaningless movement of the jaws
In the looking glass
That flatters you
Or in the rattle of hollow applause

Blind circle, moon and sun
Body willing, mind undone
One pain ending while another begins
Lies, ruin, disease
Into wounds like these
Let the truth sting

From the hub to the limit
Through the urban hollows
Out into the poles of the extreme
To echo through the numbness
Of these godless minutes
In the shadow of delusion's regime

But here watching the night
As it opens like a flower
And the day starts to rust
Feeling time pound
Like a silent hammer
On this empire of dust
And I'm thinking about the bullet
And the TV screen, the dollar, and the clenched fist
And if we're searching for peace
How come we still believe
In hatred as the catalyst

Through the borderline
In front and behind
Down the road of thorns
Between the barbwire and the soul
Bitters and chains
Is all that remains
Where the wheel has rolled

I feel it from the pit of my stomach
Into the ditch of my mind
Inside the chambers of my heart
As I stare half blind
At these walls of cardboard
At this space that I've rented
At your beauty that is crumbling
Though you try so hard to prevent it

On and on
Body willing, mind undone
One pain ending while another begins
Lies, ruin, disease
Into wounds like these
Let the truth sting
Let the truth sting
Let the truth sting