kevin devine
another bag of bones
It's a brush fire spreading, feeding as it moves It's a disappeared glacier; it's the airborne flu It's your disbelieving eyes logging concrete miles It's your yawning conscience and your lawyer's smile It's an occupied country foaming at the mouth No smoking gun, no mushroom cloud It's a military mother with a boy in hell And it's a flag-draped casket down an oil well It's an Argentine school-girl gagged and bound It's a torture camp; it's a long way down It's the constant bracing shock of now And it's the whole damn world turned inside out, alright It's a march to extinction with your god in step It's his name in your mouth; it's his cross on your neck It's a farm boy sprinting over desert dirt And he's panting the 'Our Father' in staccato spurts Now that's his automatic rifle and it tells no lies It's his truth in your stomach, it's no alibi But the trouble lies on the other side With an equal truth prepping for his holy night He sees the crescent and the star blink in the virgin sky And hears the call of milk and honey from the afterlife And as he eases to the checkpoint, he is calm and sure It's collateral damage; it's the cost of war It's another bag of bones for the Gods to sort It's just another bag of bones for the Gods to sort  Well it's a species disappearing, all the birds fly south In a January heatwave, in a pulsing crowd It's an African Militia, kids with sub-machines It's a conflict diamond on your bride-to-be It's the dispossessed lining up at every gate It's the facts worth facing, faced way too late It's the mission of modernity, go get what's yours Til there's nothing leftover to go get no more And it's not what we're owed, but it's what we've earned And it's closer than we realise, and it's time now to burn And oh it's time now to burn And oh it's time now to burn And oh it's time now to burn, to burn