Madnestan
03-05-2006, 21:10
4/8/89 on seeing in the Sunday paper photos of mothers and children lying in the street where they had been gassed by Saddam Hussein's air force.
Just the smell of a notion
I never let go
Clinging like dust
Stinging like snow
How I've walked my way
At an easy pace
No-one but me
Has troubled my face
But deep in the wound
Of the heart that knows
The smell of a notion
Comes and it goes
My children grow up
Under sheltering skies
Other children are tortured
Before fathers' eyes.
It's not my fault
And the world is wide
And full of good reasons
For not taking sides
And I'm holding my children
At the end of the day
In the streets of Halabja
They've come out to play
And I'm waking my children
As a new day begins
In the streets of Halabja
The gas cloud rolls in
There may be no connection
No chain leading back
From the Midlands of England
To the hills of Iraq
But it's business as usual
I do a job just the same
But was the Middle East market
Opened up in my name?
And was there some little contract
For some British goods
Which if we hadn't sold them
Somebody else would?
It's a line I can't follow
It's too much for the mind
But the smell of a notion
Lingers behind
So I sit with my son
Watching him play
And suddenly a notion
Becomes clear as day
How the life of the children
Is the one playing there
and the names and the cultures
Are painted on air
Don't look for connection
Just surface we've seen
There's no separation
Nor ever has been
No separation
Between my son playing there
And those babies face up
In the poisonous air
But the heart that knows
Couldn't live with the pain
So the heart closes over
And we start again
And I curse the soldiers
(Who are nothing like me)
And I mistake this notion
For sympathy.
From the land of freedom ,Dersim
Just the smell of a notion
I never let go
Clinging like dust
Stinging like snow
How I've walked my way
At an easy pace
No-one but me
Has troubled my face
But deep in the wound
Of the heart that knows
The smell of a notion
Comes and it goes
My children grow up
Under sheltering skies
Other children are tortured
Before fathers' eyes.
It's not my fault
And the world is wide
And full of good reasons
For not taking sides
And I'm holding my children
At the end of the day
In the streets of Halabja
They've come out to play
And I'm waking my children
As a new day begins
In the streets of Halabja
The gas cloud rolls in
There may be no connection
No chain leading back
From the Midlands of England
To the hills of Iraq
But it's business as usual
I do a job just the same
But was the Middle East market
Opened up in my name?
And was there some little contract
For some British goods
Which if we hadn't sold them
Somebody else would?
It's a line I can't follow
It's too much for the mind
But the smell of a notion
Lingers behind
So I sit with my son
Watching him play
And suddenly a notion
Becomes clear as day
How the life of the children
Is the one playing there
and the names and the cultures
Are painted on air
Don't look for connection
Just surface we've seen
There's no separation
Nor ever has been
No separation
Between my son playing there
And those babies face up
In the poisonous air
But the heart that knows
Couldn't live with the pain
So the heart closes over
And we start again
And I curse the soldiers
(Who are nothing like me)
And I mistake this notion
For sympathy.
From the land of freedom ,Dersim