The Happy Family – The Courier

From the album ‘The Man On Your Street‘ (1982).

Lyrics

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 schemes 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
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
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, well
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

Please say that’s enough
Please say that’s enough
Please say that’s enough

Please say that
Oh, please say that’s enough

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