Another Bag Of Bones

It's a brushfire spreading, feeding as it moves

It's a disappeared glacier; it's the airborne flu

It's your disbelieving eyes logging concrete miles

It's your yawning conscience and your lawyer's smile

It's an occupied country foaming at the mouth

No smoking gun, no mushroom cloud

It's a military mother with a boy in hell

And it's a flag-draped casket down an oil well

It's an Argentine school-girl gagged and bound

It's a torture camp; it's a long way down

It's the constant bracing shock of now

And it's the whole damn world turned inside out, alright

It's a march to extinction with your god in step

It's his name in your mouth; it's his cross on your neck

It's a farm boy sprinting over desert dirt

And he's panting the 'Our Father' in staccato spurts

Now that's his automatic rifle and it tells no lies

It's his truth in your stomach, it's no alibi

But the trouble lies on the other side

With an equal truth prepping for his holy night

He sees the crescent and the star blink in the virgin sky

And hears the call of milk and honey from the afterlife

And as he eases to the checkpoint, he is calm and sure

It's collateral damage; it's the cost of war

It's another bag of bones for the Gods to sort

It's just another bag of bones for the Gods to sort

Well it's a species disappearing, all the birds fly south

In a January heatwave, in a pulsing crowd

It's an African Militia, kids with sub-machines

It's a conflict diamond on your bride-to-be

It's the dispossessed lining up at every gate

It's the facts worth facing, faced way too late

It's the mission of modernity, go get what's yours

Til there's nothing leftover to go get no more

And it's not what we're owed, but it's what we've earned

And it's closer than we realise, and it's time now to burn

And oh it's time now to burn

And oh it's time now to burn

And oh it's time now to burn, to burn