Bruce Cockburn Birmingham Shadows Lyrics

Birmingham Shadows Lyrics

Birmingham

Just behind the mountain

Sparse streelamps glow in hot
half-moon haze

Shadows shorten into little black pools that elongate
behind

We walk, talk some, laugh some

Worked hard, now wired, and
hanging out

I'm curious what you might be all about

Curious, too,
what that dark-shape in the hard shining cruiser might do

And you have no
idea what you're getting

out of of your own curiosity and tense energy

Tattoo on chest like the key to the puzzle of your pumping heart

Wearing your shadows all over your sleeve

Wearing the role of young
upstart 



Chorus:

Birmingham shadows fall

You show a
little, I let something show too

It's now or not at all

Out on the
road, it's always instant get-to-know-you 



Under velvet trees,
towering like the sides of a well

Before the empty two office blocks

Which we're admonished not to enter

Policeman studies us, finds us
confusing

More amusing than threat

Moves on, bemused

Pavement
spirals down ahead like the fossil of a giant shell

Along the kingdom's
midnight marches

I wear my shadows where they're harder to see

But
they follow me everywhere

I guess that should tell me that I'm travelling
toward light

I guess something you sang made me remember that

I
guess I'm saying thanks for that 



[Chorus]

[Instrumental
Break]

Got a head full of horrors and a heart full of night

At home
in the darkness, but hungry for dawn

I only remember scenes, never the
stories I live

The good things about that is, it's easy to forgive

Can't make assumptions about any of this

We're nomads following our
own songlines

Who knows what could strike before we meet again?

But
if I fall down and die

Without sa