It was built where the rain fell grey,
Where men worked hard and drank pain away.
Where fathers were silent, childrens dreams small.
And nobody spoke of the hurt at all.
Its mills had gone quiet, its high streets grown bare,
With boarded-up windows and in the air.
There were debts on the doorstep, and jobs hard to find,
And old wounds passed down through the town’s troubled mind.
There were nights with a bottle, mornings of shame,
And promises broken no where to complain.
For a man can be wounded and still cause pain,
Then kneel in the dark and do it again. Addicts shuffle beneath skies of grey,
Past old stone churches, a rent due each day.
Through pubs full of laughter and bedrooms of tears,
Through lives spent in silence, all alone with you fears.
One night, by a churchyard, a figure stood in the rain,
And remembered loved ones bathing in pain.
No angel appeared, no voice from above,
Just the weight of their wrongs, and the memory of love.
It learned that forgiveness was more than a friend,
And the wounded still standing should call it an end.
Couples facing truth, making right what they could,
And becoming, through mercy, beyond broken glass, and the blood.
Hearts here stumble, wrestle with shame,
Carrying old sorrows, call out His name.
The rain drops splashing truth, they’d once spat lies,
More foreign faces with anger in their eyes.
The sins of our fathers are heavy to bear,
But a chain can be broken by someone who cares.
Still the child inherits the wounds of a man,
til it lights up a cigarette and clicks open a can.
So here’s to the broken, the bruised and the brave,
To the people who fight and take all to the grave.
For we’re more than our worst, more than all we’ve done,
The old road leads out, though the nights just begun.
