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Thoughts of Abilene(D. Lyons/R. Kavana)

 

In the silence I succumb to Thoughts of Abilene

A song that ran into my head in Nineteen-Sixteen

As I lay there in the rubble with a rifle in my hands

Old enough to know why, too young to understand

And in the rain that was fallin’ I heard the dyin’ cry

A machine gun was hammerin’, hammerin’ out a life.

It was a worker’s hand that put the bullets in the gun,

It was into a worker’s heart that the bloody bullets spun.

 

    Guns’n’drums and drums’n’guns, aroo, aroo,

    As cannon fodder for the cause we’ll do, we’ll do,

    As we rally ‘round the flag boys, rally once again

    Shoutin’ the battle cry of Freedom!

 

As metal rang on metal to explode the firing caps

The flashing of the gunfire lit the metal of his hat

His young face was filled with fear, his eyes shone white with fright

As he sent a dozen bullets into my chest that night

And in the silence I succumbed to Thoughts Of Abilene

As the bullets smashed into my bones in Nineteen-Sixteen.

Now you might wonder who I was, but more importantly than that

In which war did I die, you don’t know and that’s a fact.

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