Lyrics:

I was longing to be wooed, I was ready to be humbled
By the words that you had written, by the syllables you mumbled
Yeah, I was ready in my heart to have my heart invaded
By the fervour of your passion, yes I came to be persuaded

But when I heard your ragged voice something switched in my perception
And I knew I was the victim of a beautiful deception
All my once exact beliefs like tangled threads unravelled
I walked out stunned and liberated and so began my travels

Keep the river on your right
And the highway to your shoulder
And the front line in your sights, pioneer
Keep your eye on the road
Remember what you told her
This is all in code, my dear

'You better get yourself a coat' said the handsome taxi driver
And he sighed like seven bridges, like a natural-born survivor
As we drove into the night I could feel the forest jangling
All the choices laid before me and their consequences dangling

We came upon a stricken ship that must have once been splendid
The captain as he died said, 'Boys, our revels now are ended'
I heard a wild holy band playing jazz that was outrageous
That invoked the days of rapture when our love was still young & contagious

Keep the river on your right...

In a dim-lit motel room two sad lovers were discoursing
On the dignity of exile and the merits of divorcing
She said 'all certainty is gone' but he leapt up still denying
Cried 'I won't believe the flame I lit is dead or even dying'

She left him drooling in the dust and with rucksack packed begun her
Bitter journey to the border which is where I wooed and won her
She was Aphrodite, Helen, Thetis, Eve among the satyrs
She was Venus in a v-neck sweater, she was all that ever mattered

Keep the river on your right...

Like Dean Moriarty's ghost I came in quest of secret knowledge
In the winter of my journey to a crumbling Druid college
There I read the books of lore and contemplated in seclusion
But I took my leave embittered, still in love with my illusions

In the drizzling Irish rain as a tender dawn was breaking
In a doorway I stood spellbound by the ancient music they were making
I took my breakfast with the Gods on a blushing Summer morning
Till a wind blew them all away; I had misread every warning

Keep the river on your right...

Under cold electric light I watch the scenes mutating
Like an old time frontier ballad or a carousel rotating
As if in a moment from a film, with astonishing precision
The camera zooms in close and a figure comes into vision

I'm in Tokyo, it's dawn, and it's raining hallelujahs
Down the bright-lit neon canyons, along the sidewalks of Shibuya
I'm trying to take a stance and rise above my contradictions
But I'm just a bunch of words in pants and most of those are fiction

Keep the river on your right