RON KAVANA
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.