Shadow On A Wall

I wrote this song for David Rovics. He liked it. If he ever gets around to recording it, I may paint illustrations to go with the words and music. Or I might even do it if nobody sings it, ever. Not being capable of singing better than a cicada, I can't, anyway.

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Keiko on a summer day, skipping down the street

Met her friend Kenji, they talked about sweets

How much they missed them, and how much they'd eat

When the war was over.

Silver fish in the silver sky

Finger on a button, death from on high

Atoms blasted to pieces, their agonised scream

Making energies that were someone's dream

And Keiko is a shadow on a wall

Shadow on a wall.

Nothing left at all

But a shadow on a wall.

Far across the sea, men in suits and uniforms

Talk over tea and cake about creating firestorms

Of might and right, of power and race

How Stalin had to be put in his place,

And Keiko is a shadow on a wall

A shadow on a wall

Nothing left of her at all

But a shadow on a wall.

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the names you say

Did not save Thanh in Vietnam from burning the  same way

Nuclear fire or napalm, it was the same

And it seems nobody is to blame

And Keiko and Thanh are shadows on a wall

Nothing left of them, left of them at all

Arifa in Fallujah, Bushra in Mosul

Irina in Beograd, Hanifa in Kabul

Silver bombs from silver planes, and they went in a flash

Not more than shadows on a wall

Just shadows on a wall

Nothing left of them, left of them at all.

Tomorrow whose daughter will skip down the street

The world laid out at her young feet

And there will be a flash, from somewhere far away

Born of decisions made some other day.

And she will be a shadow on a wall

Like Keiko and her sisters, nothing left at all

Just a shadow on a wall

A shadow on a wall

A shadow on a wall.

Copyright B Purkayastha 2020