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 once made Had to stop in my tracks for fear Of walking on the mines I'd laid And if I 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 are all sleeping Beneath that 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 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 The 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 once played I had to stop in my tracks for fear Of walking on the mines I'd laid And if I 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