The Town of Bent Necks

Lyrics

[Intro]
(footsteps on cobbles, stopping short)
Don't look at his face. Look at his feet. Look DOWN.

[Verse 1]
You have to understand the shape this took inside the town:
it wasn't corporate, it was neighbours, and it went all the way down.
Which bakery you used. Which pub you drank inside.
Which of the two football clubs you took your sons to on a Saturday.
And every single one of it was settled at a glance
by what a person had strapped onto the bottom of their pants.

[Chorus]
The town of bent necks! That's what they called it!
Everybody walking round with their chin against their chest!
Not out of shame, not out of prayer, not out of anything but this:
you had to see the stripes or the cat before you said hello!
The town of bent necks. Look down. Look down.
A whole town's posture bent by two old men.

[Verse 2]
You didn't marry across it. That's documented, that's real.
Families kept the line the way you'd keep a border sealed.
And the children of the workers had it handed to them whole —
a feud they didn't start, in a town they couldn't leave,
over shoes. Over SHOES. Over stitching and a stripe.
And they all knew it was ridiculous. And it lasted all their lives.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
And here's the thing that finishes me: it's over now. It ended.
In two thousand and nine, the two firms put out a team,
played a football match together, mixed the squads, shook hands,
sixty years after the brothers, decades after both were dead.
Everyone said "at last." Everyone said "about time."
Nobody could remember what the argument had been.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(footsteps resume, unhurried)
Look up. It's alright.
You can look up now.