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European
Christian
Muslim
Jew
May the first at last bring peace to you
From The Vistula to Scotland’s shores
Let it today consign our wars
To history where they belong
And trust its union makes us strong
Today let us start to tolerate
To value and appreciate
That in the difference of our skins and tongues
We find a richness that becomes
A quality to celebrate
In every European state

This town has no ghost tours
For all its ghosts are still alive
And tonight they walk the perfect streets
Where they are not allowed to die
They linger in the cafes
And they smoke their cigarettes
And they tell each other all the tales
That history forgets
There are no lonely hearts here
Keeping time or keeping mum
Or keeping secrets from each other
For fear of what they will become
They dare not yet declare themselves
Lest either should discover
That when winter falls upon this town
Each will yet betray the other

In shopping malls with prayer rooms the soft porn hides its nipples
While mammon shoes the pretty feet of fashionista’s cripples
Suicidal Hindus fail to prick the collective conscience
Living nightmares building dream homes
Above the height of nonsense
Souks of gold from god knows where washed clean by unseen hands
As Sim City on testosterone rises from the sand
Here youth has lost its innocence and turned to rape and pillage
To build media a city and knowledge just a village

Where money bubbles to the ground
Our friends all help themselves
The money goes on trinkets
Their morality to hell
In life’s business class these passengers
Appease their trophy wives
In the flatness of their beds
And the sincerity of lies
Beyond the umpteenth parallel
Drawn by our fathers long ago
The money now is vaporised
But on must go the show

Sitting in an Irish bar drinking Tiger beer
Is as close to racial integration as it ever gets round here
Lebanese smoke Gauloise
Philippina serve them Scotch
Brazilians play football
Italians sit and watch
Tipsy English teachers practice provocation
As a solitary Indian awaits reincarnation
Americans sing love songs
Australians sing along
The Swedish cell phone silent
The Polish girl long gone

Beneath a milk white monument to a slaughtered secret army
Masters of the universe masticate on calamari
The waitress in her jet-black hot-pants takes away their breath
In the shadow of the valley of her father’s father’s death
An old soldier gathers boxes of bruised raspberries and plums
By the market’s silent testament to what he has not yet become
Beneath the dislocated darkness love is sold or dissipated
Its violence now violation among the violated
All that we have ever known is handed down as new
As what all of us are certain of and as all that we can do
But which of is buying here and which of us is selling
The then time of our knowledge or the now time of its telling

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