Murphy Can Never Go Home

[Verse 1] Well, it's a hell of an age, puts a man ill at ease Sets his mind in a rage, makes him weak at the knees When he sees things are changing and he's marking time His workmates all twenty, and he's past his prime And he longs to go back home to Ireland For he's tired of the craic and the living it rough And his twenty-one years on the buildings have taught him When you've got nothing then you've had enough [Chorus] As he sits in the bar and he smokes his cigar And he boasts how he's never alone Ah, but I know he's lying, his big heart is breaking Murphy can never go home [Verse 2] And he reads in the paper of the economic miracles Brought by the Yanks and the men from Japan Building the blocks of the twenty-first century What use have they for a labouring man? Once hard men were heroes but now they are fools And all the old values, uprooted and gone And when he woke up he found that they'd changed all the rules Now there's nothing to do but keep labouring on [Chorus] As he sits in the bar and he smokes his cigar And he boasts how he's never alone Ah, but I know he's lying, his big heart is breaking Murphy can never go home [Verse 3] And it's a hard, rocky road that first took him to Birmingham Long in the making with no going back Writing no letters or words of his whereabouts No family at all for to help him keep track He can sit here all night in no hurry at all For there's nobody waiting but old 'Father Time' And as the last drop of sunshine, goes down on the Brum A song from his childhood he quietly will rhyme [Chorus] As he sits in the bar and he smokes his cigar And he boasts how he's never alone Ah, but I know he's lying, his big heart is breaking Murphy can never go home