Gethsemane

Among the headstones you played as boys

Crypts and tombs like a roomful of toys

Just up the river from the smoke and the noise

Gethsemane

And there’s war-whoops and secret signs in the trees

Estuary smells coming up on the breeze

O perfect endless days like these

O Gethsemane

Sailboat on the Cadie, pushbike on the quay

In your eyes there’s fire, in your hand destiny

‘O be something, be something fine!’

Just down the river, into the noise and the smoke

Being daring with the staring, uncaring folk

Who laugh with you, laugh at you, you’ll never get the

joke

Gethsemane

And they broke your spirit there in the marines

Flushed your head down in the latrines

Frozen in your sacrement, derailed in your teens

Never saw the enemy

And those bosses betrayed, soon let you go

The fire in your eyes, how could they know

‘O be something, be something fine!’

Now you’ve got your own boys, hell bent for leather

Dead before they’re 18, or bitter old men forever

They never saw the halo moon rise over the river

Of Gethsemane

Now there’s a pain in your head puts lead in your shoes

Better get it seen to, it’s going to be bad news

How did the perfect world get so confused

O Gethsemane

Who sucked out the freedom, days without end

Under the weight of it all you must bend

‘O be something, be something fine!’