COUNTRY MUSIC

Our music makes widow-makers,
   Our dreams are destroyers of dreams;
Sword wielders and treaty breakers,
   We're stone-deaf to desolate screams;
Peace-losers and peace-forsakers,
   Who glare when the bombers' moon gleams:
Yes we are the movers and shakers
   Of the world for ever, it seems.

With paranoid lies and false finds
We capture our citizens' minds,
   And out of these fanciful stories
   We fashion America's glories:
One man with such dreams, at pleasure,
   Can go forth and conquer a crown;
Two, by New Century's measure,
   Can trample a country down.

We, with the future lying
   Pre-emptively sunk in the earth,
Will fill whole regions with crying,
   To echo our pride's cruel mirth:
The U.N. we'll break prophesying
   Full spectrum display's of our worth,
For this age sees the peace-dream lie dying,
   While your nightmares are coming to birth.

                    (Apologies to A. W. E. O'Shaughnessy)