Fear Of The Civil War

There's bayonets and bones
In these Virginian cobbled stones
All buried 'neath the shadows of your mind
And now a shopping mall is found
Built on that bloody battleground
And I always see it open on my way home

Signs that advertise free salvation
Are the very ones who take your soul away

But there's you and me and 103
Reasons to leave those troubled days behind

I can empathise myself
I know it can be overwhelming
History's rubbed its grubby hands on everything
There's the dates and piles of embers
Someone's bothered to remember
It's the secrets that weren't written down that haunt you

You say, 'If ghosts they really do walk among us
'Then these must be the angriest of all'

But there's you and me and 103
Reasons to leave those troubled days behind

There's a deer head that's mounted in the K-Mart
It was donated when they closed the Five and Dine
With antlers like strikes of lightning
Frozen in time

We're always worried when you're gone
You said you'd spaced out on the lawn
Counting columns of the antebellum homes
When you woke up in Athens, Greece
You were surrounded by police
Who picked you up and lovingly carried you back home

To dredge your dreaming for flashes of meaning
It's like running alongside a moving train

But there's you and me and 103
Reasons to leave those troubled days behind

Yeah there's you and me, 1863
Watching the proclamation being signed