I'll take you down to that bright city mile ---
there to powder your sweet face and paint on a smile,
that will show all of the pleasures and none of the pain,
when you join my explosion
and play with my games.
WarChild dance the days, and dance the nights away.
No unconditional surrender; no armistice day ---
each night I'll die in my contentment and lie in your grave.

The wind is on the river and the tide has turned too late,
so we're sailing for another shore where some other ladies wait.
To throw us silken whispers: catch us by the anchor chains ---
But we all laugh so politely and we sail on just the same.
For Queen and Country in the long dying day,
And it's been this way for five long years,
since we signed our souls away.

Ladies of leisure, with their eyes on the back roads ---
All looking for strangers, to whom they extend welcomes
With a smile and a glimpse of pink knees and elbows;
Of satin and velvet --- good ladies, good fortune.
Ladies.
They sing of their heroes: of solitary soldiers
Invested in good health and manner most charming.
Whose favors are numbered (none the less well intended)

In and out of the front door, ran twelve back-door angels.
Their hair was a golden-brown ---
they didn't see me wink my eye.
`Tis said they put we men to sleep with just a whisper,
And touch the heads of dying dogs --- and make them linger.
They carry their candles high --- and they light the dark hours.
And sweep all the country clean with pressed and scented wild-flowers.

Over the mountains, and under the sky ---
riding dirty gray horses, go you and I.
Mating with chance, copulating with mirth ---
the sad-glad paymasters (for what it's worth).
The ice-cream castles are refrigerated;
the super-marketeers are on parade.
There's a golden handshake hanging round your neck,
as you light your cigarette on the burning deck.

Meanwhile back in the year One --- when you belonged to no-one ---
you didn't stand a chance son, if your pants were undone.
`Cause you were bred for humanity and sold to society ---
one day you'll wake up in the Present Day ---
a million generations removed from expectations
of being who you really want to be.

Skating away ---
skating away ---
skating away on the thin ice of the New Day.

Walking through forests of palm tree apartments ---
scoff at the monkeys who live in their dark tents
down by the waterhole --- drunk every Friday ---
eating their nuts --- saving their raisins for Sunday.
Lions and tigers who wait in the shadows ---
they're fast but they're lazy, and sleep in green meadows.

Let's bungle in the jungle --- well, that's all right by me.

I'll see you at the Weighing-In,
when your life's sum-total's made
and you set your wealth in Godly deeds
against the sins you've laid.
And you place your final burden
on your hard-pressed next of kin:
Send the chamber-pot back down the line
to be filled up again.

And the hard-headed miracle worker
who bathes his hands in blood,
Will welcome you to the final nod ---
and cover you with mud.