Internal Exile (Dick, Boult, Simmonds) Lyrics

I saw a blue umbrella in Princes Street Gardens
Heading out west for the Lothian Road
An Evening News stuffed deep in his pocket
Wrapped up in his problems to keep away the cold
Grierson's spirit haunts the dockyards,
Where the only men working are on
Documentary crews,
Shooting film as the lines get longer,
As the seams run out, as the oil runs dry.

(chorus)

Hey there laddie, Internal Exile!
When will you realise we've got to let go?
Hey there lassie, Internal Exile!
When will you realise we've got to let go?

Starlings wheeling round Georgian spires,
And the fires of Grangemouth burn the skies.
A lion sleeps in a tenement close,
In a country that's tired and deaf to his roar

(chorus)

They bury a wasteland deep in the wilderness
Poison the soil and reap the harvest,
Of blind indifference, greed and apathy
Sowed way back in our history
The fish are few the harbours empty
The keels now rot on our oil slicked shores
The sheep are gone, the farms deserted
We're out of sight and we're out of mind.

(chorus)

Like our fathers before us,
We've eyes for America.
Dream of a new life on foreign shores.
But wherever we go, we'll always know,
That the land we stand on, is never our own.

(chorus)