The Cloud Factory Songtext
von June Tabor

My father worked in the Cloud Factory
He'd come home wreathed in dreams each day
My Mother took his cloudy clothes
To brush the threads of dreams away

She'd scold and say, "You and your dreams,
They're just for kids and fools like you."
But Father he'd just wink his eye
Smile and say, "Are you sure that's true?"

My Mother thought him fanciful
She used to chide him all the while
But me, I thought him wonderful
Do anything to see him smile

I used to hear him singing low
The words are with me to this day
"You have to hold on to your dreams
Or else they simply slip away"


My Father taught me how to sing
He sang that dreams were everything
Can't be bought and can't be sold
More than silver, more than gold

The last time I saw him, ill and dying
The only time I saw him crying
Too late for dreams to come true now
As he watched his last cloud rolling by

Back home she opened windows wide
And let the dreams out strand by strand
'Til all but one had blown away
I caught and kept it in my hand

My Mother doesn't do much lately
With no more clouds to clear away
And since they closed the factory down
No dreams seem to drift this way

I found her sitting alone and still
At first I thought her fast asleep
But Father's coat was in her lap
And around her feet the dreams lay deep


She said, "He taught me how to sing
He sang that dreams were everything
Can't be bought and can't be sold
More than silver, more than gold"

Sometimes I walk by the disused factory
And gaze into the empty sky
And if I let the fancy lead me
A dream or two come drifting by

I'll teach my children how to sing
To sing that dreams are everything
Can't be bought and can't be sold
More than silver, more than gold

My Father taught me how to sing
He sang that dreams were everything
Can't be bought and can't be sold
More than silver, more than gold