Just behind the station, before you reach the traffic island

A river runs through a concrete channel

I took you there once; I think it was after the Leadmill

The water was dirty and it smelt of industrialisation

Little mesters coughing their lungs up

And globules the colour of tomato ketchup

But it flows, yeah, it flows

Underneath the city through dirty brickwork conduits

Connecting white witches on the Moor

With pre-raphaelites down in Broomhall

Beneath the old Trebor factory

That burnt down in the early seventies

Leaving an antiquated sweet-shop smell

And caverns of nougat and caramel

Nougat

Yeah, nougat and caramel

And the river flows on

Yeah, the river flows on

Beneath pudgy fifteen-year olds addicted to coffee whitener

Courting couples naked on Northern Upholstery

And pensioners gathering dust like bowls of plastic tulips

And it finally comes above ground again at Forge Dam

The place where we first met

I went there again for old time's sake

Hoping to find the child's toy-horse ride

That played such a ridiculously tragic tune

It was still there, but none of the kids seemed interested in riding on it

And the cafe was still there too

The same press-in plastic letters on the price list

And scuffed formica-top tables

I sat as close as possible to the seat where I'd met you that autumn afternoon

And then, after what seemed like hours of thinking about it

I finally took your face in my hands and I kissed you for the first time

And a feeling like electricity flowed through my whole body

And all the time, in the background

The sound of that ridiculously heartbreaking child's ride outside

At the other end of town, the river flows underneath an old railway viaduct

I went there with you once, except you were somebody else

And we gazed down at the sludgy brown surface of the water together

Then a passer-by told us that it used to be a local custom

To jump off the viaduct into the river

When coming home from the pub on a Saturday night

But that this custom had died out when someone jumped

And landed too near to the riverbank

And had sunk in the mud there

And drowned before anyone could reach them

I don't know if he'd just made the whole story up

But there's no way you'd get me to jump off that bridge

No chance, never in a million years

Yeah, a river flows underneath this city

I'd like to go there with you now, my pretty

And follow it on for miles and miles

Below other people's ordinary lives

Occasionally catching a glimpse of the moon

Through man-hole covers along the route

Yeah, it's dark sometimes

But if you hold my hand, I think I know the way

Oh, this is as far as we got last time

But if we go just another mile, we will surface

Surrounded by grass and trees

And the fly-over that takes the cars to cities

Buds that explode at the slightest touch

Nettles that sting, but not too much

I've never been past this point

What lies ahead, I really could not say

And I used to live just by the river

In a dis-used factory just off the Wicker

And the river flowed by day after day

And "One day," I thought, "One day I will follow it"

But that day never came

I moved away and lost track

But tonight I am thinking about making my way back

I may find you there and float on

Wherever the river may take me

Wherever the river may take me

Wherever the river may take us

Wherever it wants us to go

Wherever it wants us to go