A Clock On Every Wall

If I were to build a house
I’d build it in a minute –
It’d have a clock on every wall
And I would keep you in it.
We’d eat pastoral foodstuffs
And make love every night,
Resolve our issues peacefully
And never need to fight.


A million sirens pierce the air
The wind an afterblast
Five million men cry in the day
The present turns the past.
Nobody understands it
For nobody’s left to know.
Nobody saw it coming
And nobody saw it go.


And in the crimson skies above
Beneath the clouds of ash
Among the things that lay destroyed
Resultants of a clash –
A little house lies on a hill
Now but a pile of wood,
And in that vast destruction-scape
The clocks have stopped for good.