• I think I'll go home and mull this over Before I cram it down my throat At long last it's crashed, it's colossal mass Has broken up into bits in my moat. Lift the mattress off the floor Walk the cramps off Go meander in the cold Hail to your dark skin Hiding the fact you're dead again Underneath the power lines seeking shade Far above our heads are the icy heights that contain all reason It's a luscious mix of words and tricks That let us bet when you know we should've folded On rocks I dreamt of where we'd stepped And the whole mess of roads we're now on. Hold your glass up, hold it in Never betray the way you've always known it is. One day I'll be wondering how I got so old just wondering how I never got cold wearing nothing in the snow. This is way beyond my remote concern Of being condescending All these squawking birds won't quit. Building nothing, laying bricks. A comment on another lyrics site gave me the key to this interpretation: "First time I heard this song... it awoke me from a content slumber i had experienced after a night of heavy drinking and ending up in a bed of a girl i loved, but would never love me back. that's the way it'd always be and the years and alcohol never solved that problem and while my heart seems to have moved on, this song brings back that thought of that time and it'll stick with me forever." I think that should be the official prologue... anyone whose ever had a similar experience can, I'm sure, relate to this icy imagery. The setting is clearly somewhere other than home, and I imagine it as the scene of a wild night much like the one mentioned in the comment above. It's morning and the brief warmth from the lover has returned to it's previous coldness. The speaker wakes up and realises that he (for the sake of argument and since the singer is a he) needs to think about what has happened - and then convince himself: Convince himself that at long last it (the truth) has revealed itself. It is likened to an iceberg which has crashed and then crumbled into his protective layer (moat), which is a good description of how sudden realisation hits you with that horrible cold "thud" and then there's the falling apart trickling within you. Things begin returning to normal: the mattress gets picked up off the floor, the cramps from the night get walked off, the normal out of bed routine ensues (meandering in the cold as opposed to the warm bed). This is all an extended metaphor for what's happening internally: the comfortable place he has found with her is taken away, the memories are 'walked off' and they go from the place of warmth to the cold. "Hail" can mean 'praise', 'call for' or the cold bits of ice from the sky. In this case I believe it means all three. He calls for and praises her dark skin, wanting warm contact again - but the word 'hail' is also tied to the iciness of the song. During this part of the song I get the image of him reaching out and caressing her skin - hailing it - and she responds even though she feels nothing for him now, and even though he knows it too they seek shelter from the logic and reason of that in the electricity between them. And so they shade themselves from the "icy heights that contain all reason" underneath the powerlines (in the joy of physical electricity) - because electricity can bring dead people back to life (she is "dead again"). Power lines also present danger, as their continued relationship does. A mix of what was said and what was done "words and tricks" led them here despite this knowledge. "On rocks" is another icy reference as well as a reference to the uncomfortable (uneasy) sleep he has been experiencing while thinking about the 'ifs' and 'maybes' of what they could have done differently. He makes a plea for her to be grateful for what they had - hold her glass up as if in a toast - and hold in the fact that she knew there could never be more between them; at the same time telling himself to be grateful and never let her know how much deeper his feelings went for her: "hold it in, never betray the way you always knew it is". He knows one day he will wonder how he spent so much time with her being so cold to him, and never realising it. He realises that by saying all this he may come off as condescending, but doesn't care. Meanwhile the birds of dawn are squawking - while laying bricks could be a reference to the aggrevated sound of the birds, it is also a reference to how the sound of the birds of dawn is the start of the end - laying the bricks for the wall between the two people, breaking down something instead of building it. It is also a metaphor for the two people who will not quit, even though they are building nothing... they still continue laying down bricks.

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