Lirieke: Martyn Joseph. Other. All In The Past.

When the valleys roared with engines

And cried with hymns of light

Disciples with canaries

Dug dark deeper than the night

Now a fiery cloudy pillar

Hovers over business parks

As the lungs of emphysemic men

Sing as rising larks

But Auld Lang Syne holds little comfort

In history?s disarray

The stolen land, the blazing croft

The past won?t go away

Boats banished from Port William

The pregnant chambermaid

Justice has a memory

Some memories will not fade


From the woods of Nova Scotia

To Vancouver Islands waves

A burnt-clan converses

And counts the unmarked graves

Of a nation and a language

Expelled from hill and glen

Meanwhile in the pubs of Partick

Their tongue speaks free again

And what to sing of Ireland

That doesn?t burst the breast

From Coleraine down to Fermanagh

The fields pray and yearn for rest

Sweet holy land of magic

Still sending out your fleece

And may it come back to you ten fold

With an armistice of peace