They're growing pines now in cotton soil
Still making boxes for the sons of toil
Still bend your back to pick you food stamps up
Black coffee still comes in a tall white cup
They took the signs down but it's loud and it's clear
You want to eat? Well now, it can't be here

Tell me how long the train's been gone
Tell me again about the dream
Tell me the story of glory hallelujah
And how we're swimming against the stream

More talk of marching on Washington
It never really seems to get things done
Along the way we maybe make good friends
But they can't tell us where the rainbow ends
It's getting more now than just out of reach
And don't go looking down at Howard Beach

Montgomery and Selma - go ask Congress
25 years, change hasn't meant progress
In Chicago you live on the south or the west side
But just like the townships - try moving in outside
   

 
I recall when you came to the rainbow ball-room
Where the soldiers used to drill
And you sang scat, swing and a Christmas song
In the shadow of a strip-steel mill
Well tonight I caught the retrospective
I had very little choice
Did the booze put the padding under your skin
For the winter of your voice?

Born to be re-born
Named to be re-named
Directed but directionless
The blameless to be blamed

Did they make you sleep in the truck your were born in?
Who put the grease in the paint?
Could you breathe in the band and the sequins?
Was there somewhere to fall when you'd faint?
And how many times did your beans make five?
Was the star only tacked to the door?
What's this long, long lane that has no turn?
We're not in Kansas anymore

Blameless like the corn that doesn't sway
By the back-lit, back-drop, back-lot. broad highway
Blameless and then somewhere in the storm
The principal boy couldn't change her uniform

We're going to roll you round and round in the re-runs
And study the chemistry
Re-play the grey Ed Sullivan's
He always looked like Nixon to me
Over your shoulder went more than one care
That could have been your song
Over and over and over and out
You never figured where you went wrong
   

 
You kept me all night talking
Equal rights for us and them
Then I heard you sold the sequal rights
To the head of M.G.M.
Your care for your profession
And for honesty and truth
So how come these party crumbs here
Come from England's upper crust?

Empty windows, empty windows in the snow
How come it's winter, winter everywhere you go?
D'you think I needed, did you think that I needed to be hurt?
Wounded in action, were you hoping I'd desert?

What was common in our background
Was this game of 'Let's pretend'
When the hosts swooped from Rebacca
There was nothing left to mend
Oh, how could you find this easy?
And how could you be so hard?
Should have seen those extra clauses
Added to your party card

Ah, wounded, wounded isn't dead
Maybe I'm colder now not in heart
But in my head
Wounded, wounded and alone
I hear 'The Last Post'
On a tenor saxophone
 

 
I grew up with a scorpion behind me
Sting in my rib-cage, the moment I drew air
Within his means there was nothing he denied me
But nothing was all we'd ever share

I couldn't be a model son
Models have no self-motivation
They ride little trains on endless tracks
I had my own route, my own destination

In kidd or blood he claimed a distant cousin
Shipping lumber, tramp steam, out of Jacksonville
And he showed me reefs and hitches by the dozen
But the knots that he tied in me, they're tighter still

I couldn't be a model son
Models learn no self-preservation
They live by grace on feet of clay
Needed my own rock, to tangle with temptation

But tempted, stung to action
Leaving home and stung some more
So we have danced it down the decades
Mother, father, son and squaw

I grew up with a scorpion behind me
Sting in my rib-cage, the moment I drew air
And tipped in ink indelibly he signed me
The blue-print of another son somewhere
 

 
The affairs of a handful of natives
Are as nothing when compared with the crowns
It's for the good of all, all the dust that falls
From deep black clouds over out-back towns

You could learn it from the chants of the song-men
'Til the song-men disappeared
Night glowed down under, in a place called 'Thunder'
From a settling dust that even settlers feared

After Maralinga, the half-life lingers
After Maralinga, the moving finger writes to say
After Maralinga:
That a government stalls
While whole lives just waste away

There are at least one hundred and thirty
Though their numbers are set to expand
Who lost their health and the health of their children
Wearing British khaki on stolen land

But meanwhile the physicists insist on accuracy
And meanwhile they total all the bills in the treasury
But between there and the suffering
Something gets lost
'Cos they won't add up and they don't pay up the clean-up cost

After Maralinga, the half-life lingers
After Maralinga, the song-men come again someday
In their deep-red ochre and their whitest clay
 

 
From Ramadan to Ramadan, thirty one tigers
Where shot through the heart by one hunter
And skinned with a razor blade
Stowed in the hull of an old fishing boat
To be sold as a trophy, a rug or a coat
And the hunter can't ever think twice
Because his children depend on the rice

Reptile, feline, amphibian
They suffer man's dominion
Raptor, equine, simian
They suffer man's dominion

From Belem to back again, tropical forest
Is slashed and burned by the acre
Then razed by the power saw
'Til nothing that's living is safe or remote
A lizard is slit from its tail to its throat
So the North demands from the South
Where you live direct from your hand to your mouth

But what he takes now he can never replace
Not even the Cheetah could ever keep pace
What he lives alongside is just merchandise
For those who don't know the value
But are hot on the price

From Geelong to Genoa, snake is in fashion
With birds eggs and butterfly wings
Raise to the power ten
Then Lemurs and rhinos are just some foot-note
In a forgotten study somebody wrote
But their passing is no mystery
They're being stolen
But their passing is no mystery
They're being stolen
 

They told me all I need to know
It came right to me, blow by blow
'Love for sale' they said
Of any kind for an agreed amount
But love has failed and can we please
Can we please close this account

There's twisted leather and a women on her knees
Like a zoo in Amsterdam; tell me, what is the cost of these?
The video scummed into light
The tape scraped their heads
And humped the bodies into sight
Adrenalin rang in my veins
But desire
Was the least those eyes contained

I was persuaded and, sated,
I felt degraded
And very far from liberated
   

Something isn't happening here
Something isn't happening here, it isn't like it should have been

The Bible belt they tighten one more hole
And crush the spirit so the save the soul
While those out on rafts without a single oar
Watched as the new wave crashed against the shore

Oh, but you don't have to ask who? or wherefore? or why, ma?
'Cos that's what it's there for and this might be Weimar
Don't give up the ghost when you give up your thanks
'Cos they send in the clowns before they send in the tanks
Something isn't happening here, oh no
Something isn't happening here, oh no

His eyes are dry, his skin's like nicotine
In lines that stretch to spell where youth has been
And this tear came from sitting on the fence
Snagged upon the pattern of events
 

 
Don't walk, don't walk it says but he can't ride
Not while his only living relative's inside
Who couldn't pay his way and couldn't pay his fines
His spirit stretched like gum between the 'stop' signs

The dust of angels hurled into your eyes
Does more than sear and more than tranquilise the burger beads of gristle marbled hard
And strewn like clam-shell pearls in your back-yard

Race me down, Felipe, race me down
To the small and secret corners of this town
Race me fast on sunset
Race me past sundown
Race me down, Felipe

The street is a storefront smashed beyond repair
Where the cheaper goods still cost too much to care
But wisdom's thrown in free with every sale
Don't fool yourself 'cos you can't even raise your bail

Say, hey Felipe, the barrio's like a barrier to a town
That no-one knows (where no-one goes)
Say, stay Felipe, left to lose, they left us curfewed,
Left us cracked in two
 

There's a slow waltz for Chile
All down through the years
Of Pinochet, murder and dread
With no quick step solution
Just the will to resist
'Til the last decent Chilean is dead

All the stencils and the arguments, the smoking and the damp
These were things that I came to resent
Until a, "Who's going to miss me if I miss now and again?"
Soon came to mean that I never went
But, drinking, I'd be there, with my fist in the air
'To consolidate we must advance'
Now a cold wind from Chile has frozen this fool
In suffering there just is no romance.

Last night I heard of the death of a stranger to me
And I didn't ask how she died
Because the way that she lived was all that we need to know
While we've still got time to decide