"Rapids" lyrics

Vagrant suspicious and quite out of breath
Stumbles into a town where the people wear frowns
Picks up a paper, the pages are blank
They say "No news today, no more writers around"
What price hope over adversity
Cause to applaud this perversity
I'm still deaf from the hydroplanes
Blessed with a cynical gaze...

No words in our own defense
Independence our recompense
Fate casting a finer line
To pity or to pay
These rapids we're rolling on
Seem calm when they're good and gone
Love, as good as the house it warms
A million miles between us
Still we're heading the same way...

I sing this song with my tongue in my cheek
For the jilted, the jaundiced, the angry young men
Who somehow believe that the status quo changes
With juvenile slogans in downmarket rags
What price hope over adversity
Cause to applaud this perversity
I'm still deaf from the hydroplanes
Blessed with a cynical gaze...