New University

When you were seven they flattened the school Said they'd rebuild it but what did they do?

  

Put you in cabins and kept you sincere

Paraded you round, the centenary year

When you were eleven they knocked down the pool

When you were thirteen they cancelled the bus A lifetime surrounded by rubble and dust

A lifetime surrounded by rubble and dust

This new university they built for us

Outside the college, the word would go round Haunting the street lights we make for the Downs Steven and Isaac, the best of the worst

Carrying out our invisible church

How we believed in it, chapter and verse

So, when you were fourteen you travelled by ambulance Much to the neighbours' disgust

You were dead to the world as the neighbours discussed The new university they built for us

Say you can't make it, say you aren't well Excuses that ring on the tongue like a bell

Of those who were raised in the gap in-between All that there will be, and all that has been Haunting the valley, haunting the screen Haunting the platform, haunting the dream

Haunting our elders, as they haunted us Haunting the young if they'd ever look up

They would laugh at us now, our unwavering trust In the new university they built for us