And so this is how it is: your revolution never came
but what right you had to take yourself away I’ll never know.
You might have sung to lift our hearts to fight another war,
now one out of a hundred barely just recalls your name.
You might have lived content had you unstrung the chords of fame
though the crests and troughs they hammered unforgiving at your shore,
and the waves they were relentless, with a fearful undertow
and the wrack they left hung on your kitchen door.
And your music has gone quiet. Where once your voice was heard
comes the ringing of the coins in rich men’s pockets.
Your people have grown soft and fat, with soft inside their heads,
they’re lulled to sleep by trinkets that they’re selling;
That mountain of machinery has since been put to work
It sells soulless songs to mask the sound of rockets.
In the streets the beggars murmur, beg for bread.
A glint of gold, a speck of silver layered on the lead
and dismal days that make the time in which we’re dwelling;
and your country has moved on. The news is full of grinning liars:
What you’d think if you were here, there is no telling.
Would you hammer out a song, stoking rage into a pyre?
Would you lose the fear of faggots? Or the blithe naiveté?
Would your eyes they start astonished if I had a chance to say
that the banner bright a hanging on that stadium in Chile
bears Victor’s name to mark too many martyrs?
Just thirty years of time and work great wonders might inspire:
the Chileans didn’t off themselves, for starters.
And so this is how it is: We need you more than we did then
and what right you had to take yourself I cannot understand.
We had no claim on you, we could not keep you ‘gainst your will
but the songs you sang to us before we’re needing once again
and the fires that burn in Baghdad are the same that burned Phnom Penh,
and the color of the skin on all the children that we kill.
There are those of us who, one more time, are trying to take a stand
and we really could have used your help here, Phil.
And your music has gone quiet; where once your voice was heard
comes the ringing of the coins in rich men’s pockets.
Your people have grown soft and fat, and soft inside their heads
they’re lulled to sleep by trinkets that they’re buying
That mountain of machinery has since been put to work
It sells soulless songs to mask the sound of rockets.
In the streets the beggars murmur, hungry, crying.
