The man who built The Titanic never talks about oceans And has a morbid fear of the cold His recurring dream is panoramic Eskimo sailors steer a ship of ice through seas of scrap metal Every sound echoes dull and heavy through fog And the captain is perpetually drunk The dreamer peers over the side of the ship The seabed is a mile below And he can make out fronds of metal weed curling up towards him The people who are going to jump when the panic starts Will simply drop like stones There's no water to catch them here As the band stops playing He can feel the great hull of ice start to shudder And hears the drawn out groan as it cracks apart Asleep, he keels over in bed, grinding his teeth hard A sound that fills his head like ice shearing on metal The man who built The Titanic lives near the Equator And seldom takes a bath His house smells of him, except the kitchen Here, without a fridge, food rots quickly in the heat And the stench attracts gulls They wheel and screech in the air above his house And, when he throws out the garbage They dive onto the deck, and fight like people in a panic And that's the man who built The Titanic The man who never talks about oceans The man who has a morbid fear of the cold