George Galloway

The Brotherhood of Man!
The Brotherhood of Man!
Whatever happened to the Brotherhood of Man?
The perfect dream of the perfect states
And the universal bond of the socialist man?

The radiant cities of the future state
The glorious promises of equal peace
The righteous left and the starry-eyed?

The poor were led up on a hill
The kingdoms were shown, each to themselves
They promised the breaking of the command of bones
They promised the making of bread from stones
They promised these things, and there they led
Dazzled worlds to a ledge

"We are too weak
For perfected states
The revolution shall come
From poor lands' fates
You fellahin men
In your sun-browned lands
There, unfallen
In Eden stand!"

And the foolish jumped
And the weak fell
And the wicked prospered
Over a bloodied shell

And tyrannies rose
And blood was bled
And new worlds forged
In a perfect shape

And the ones that cried on
And the ones who had led
And those intellectuals bred
Now? They sleep in soft beds.

-

Memory is short
And duty a word
So easily forgot,
The post-modern word

Now poverty is blamed
On the poor themselves
And brilliant thieves
Have hid the graves

The beggar's own culture
Deprived of choice
The religious creed -
This tendency to breed!

And the ugliest of those
Who once egged on
Squalid and foul
Fat-souled men
Build new cages
To hold men in

Take money for oil
Take money for blood
Pimping and dealing
For savaging states

And not the Texans
And not the corrupt few
And not the straight-forward
Profit-chasing crew

But rather the clever
And of Red views
That piously denouncing
Peace-loving muse

And the oil-money flowed
And the organized crowd
Funded in secret, by
Ba'athism endowed

And this one instance
And this one fall
But daily in darkness
Others will crawl

And by day and by night
For the pious and wise
Oil-money will finance
Wild blood-libel cries.

5/1/03


Thanks to chromal for helping me iron out that last line...