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