Record Tracklist

1. Let England Shake
   Let England Shake
   
   

   The West’s asleep. Let England shake,
   weighted down with silent dead.
   I fear our blood won’t rise again.

   England’s dancing days are done.
   Another day, Bobby, for you to come home
   and tell me indifference won.

   Smile, smile Bobby, with your lovely mouth.
   Pack up your troubles, let’s head out
   to the fountain of death
   and splash about, swim back & forth
   and laugh out loud,

   until the day is ending,
   and the birds are silent in the branches,
   and the insects are courting in the bushes,
   and by the shores of lovely lakes
   heavy stones are falling.

2. The Last Living Rose
   The Last Living Rose
   
   

   Goddam’ Europeans! Take me back to England
   and the grey, damp filthiness of ages,
   fog rolling down behind the mountains,
   and on the graveyards, and dead sea-captains.

   Let me walk through the stinking alleys
   to the music of drunken beatings,
   past the Thames River, glistening like gold
   hastily sold for nothing.

   Let me watch night fall on the river,
   the moon rise up and turn to silver,
   the sky move, the ocean shimmer,
   the hedge shake, the last living rose quiver.

3. The Glorious Land
   The Glorious Land
   
   

   How is our glorious country ploughed?
   Not by iron ploughs –
   our land is ploughed by tanks and feet marching.

   How is our glorious country sown?
   Not with wheat and corn –
   How is our glorious land bestowed?

   And what is the glorious fruit of our land?
   Its fruit is deformed children.
   What is the glorious fruit of our land?
   Its fruit is orphaned children.

4. The Words That Maketh Murder
   The Words That Maketh Murder
   
   

   I have seen and done things I want to forget –
   soldiers fell like lumps of meat,
   blown and shot out beyond belief.
   arms and legs were in the trees.

   I have seen and done things I want to forget –
   coming from an unearthly place,
   longing to see a woman’s face
   or hear a piano’s grace,
   instead of the words that gather pace,
   the words that maketh murder.

   I have seen and done things I want to forget –
   a Corporal, who’s nerves were shot
   climbing behind a fierce, gone sun,
   flies swarming everyone,
   death lingering, stunk
   over the whole summit peak
   flesh quivering in the heat.
   This was something else again.
   I fear it cannot be explained.
   The words that maketh murder.

5. All and Everyone
   All and Everyone
   
   

   Death was everywhere,
   in the air
   and in the sounds
   coming off the mounds
   of Bolton’s Ridge.
   Death’s anchorage.
   When you rolled a smoke
   or told a joke,
   it was in the laughter
   and drinking water,
   it approached the beach
   as strings of cutters,
   dropped into the sea and lay around us.

   Death was in the ancient fortress,
   shelled by a million bullets
   from gunners, waiting in the copses
   with hearts that threatened to pop their boxes,
   as we advanced into the sun
   death was all and everyone.

   Death hung in the smoke and clung
   to 400 acres of useless beachfront.
   A bank of red earth, dripping down
   death, now, and now, and now.
   Death was everywhere,
   in the air
   and in the sounds
   coming off the mounds
   of Bolton’s Ridge.
   Death’s anchorage.
   Death was in the staring sun,
   fixing its eyes on everyone.
   It rattled the bones of the Light Horsemen
   still lying out there in the open

   as we, advancing in the sun
   sing, Death to all and everyone.

6. On Battleship Hill
   On Battleship Hill
   
   

   The scent of Thyme carried on the wind,
   stings your face into remembering
   that nature has won again.

   On Battleship Hill’s caved in trenches,
   a hateful feeling still lingers, even now, 80 years later.
   Cruel nature, cruel, cruel nature.

   The land returns to how it has always been.
   The scent of Thyme carried on the wind.
   Jagged mountains jutting out,
   cracked like teeth in a rotten mouth.
   On Battleship Hill I hear the wind,
   Say, Cruel nature has won again.

7. England
   England
   
   

   I live and die
   through England.
   I live and die
   through England.
   It leaves sadness.
   It leaves a taste,
   a bitter one.

   Remedies
   never were,
   remedies,
   not within my reach.
   I cannot go on as I am.
   I cannot leave.

   A withered vine,
   a bitter one,
   reaching from
   the nations’ dirt.
   England,
   I have searched for your springs,
   but people stagnate with time
   like water or air.

   Undaunted,
   never-failing love for you,
   England,
   is all, to which I cling.

8. In the Dark Places
   In the Dark Places
   
   

   We got up early, washed our faces,
   walked the fields and put up crosses,
   Passed through the damned mountains,
   went hellwards,
   and some of us returned,
   and some of us did not.

   In the fields and in the forests,
   under the moon and under the sun
   another summer has passed before us,
   and not one man has,
   not one woman has
   revealed the secrets
   of this world.

   So our young men
   hid with guns
   in the dirt
   and in in the dark places.

9. Bitter Branches
   Bitter Branches
   
   

   Bitter branches spreading out.
   There is none more bitter than the wood.
   Into the white world it grows,
   twisting its roots, a swarm of bees,
   twisting under soldiers’ feet.
   Soldiers, standing in a line,
   the damp earth underneath,
   holding their rifles high.
   Holding their young wives
   with white hands.

   Hold up the clear glass to see.
   Hold up the clear glass and look through;
   soldiers standing in formation,
   the damp earth underneath,
   holding their rifles high.
   Their young wives,
   with white hands wave goodbye.
   Their arms as bitter branches
   spreading into the white world.

10. Hanging In The Wire
    Hanging In The Wire
    
    

    Walker sees the mist rise
    over a no-man’s-land.
    He sees in front of him
    a smashed up waste-ground.
    There are no fields or trees.
    No blades of grass.
    Just unburied ghosts
    hanging in the wire.

    Walker’s in the wire,
    limbs pointing upwards.
    There are no birds singing
    The White Cliffs of Dover.
    There are no trees to sing from.
    He cannot hear the wind.
    Far off, a symphony.
    Do you hear the guns beginning?

    James Walker’s in the mist rising
    over no-man’s-land,
    in the battered waste-ground,
    the big guns firing.

11. Written on the Forehead
    Written on the Forehead
    
    

    People throwing dinars
    at the belly-dancers,
    in a sad circus
    beside a trench of burning oil.

    People throw belongings,
    a life-time’s earnings,
    amongst the scattered rubbish
    and suitcase on the sidewalk.

    Date palms, orange
    and tangerine trees,
    and eyes are crying
    for everything.

    I talked to an old man
    by the generator,
    standing on the gravel
    by the fetid river.

    He turned to me,
    then surveyed the scene,
    said, war is here
    in our beloved city.

    Some dove in the river
    and tried to swim away
    through 10,000 tonnes of sewage,
    fate written on their foreheads,

    date palms, orange
    and tangerine trees,
    and eyes were crying
    for everything.

12. The Colour Of The Earth
    The Colour Of The Earth
    
    

    Louis was my dearest friend
    fighting in the Anzac trench.
    Louis ran forward from the line
    and I never saw him again.

    Later in the dark
    I thought I heard Louis’ voice
    calling for his mother then me,
    but I couldn’t get to him.

    He’s still up on that hill.
    Twenty years on that hill.
    Nothing more than a pile of bones,
    but I think of him still.

    If I was asked I’d tell
    the colour of the earth that day –
    it was dull, and browny-red,
    The colour of blood I’d say.