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Birkenau (the Birch Meadow)

Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird
Language: English


Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird

Related Songs

Die Kinder vom Bullenhuser Damm
(Hannes Wader)
Migrant Chorale
(Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird)
Sunday After the War
(Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird)


[2006]
Album “The Broken Tongue”


Down by the brook where the birches are thin,
The birds in the trees with their voices of tin
Sing even after the numbers begin,
As though there were nothing above but the wind.
A lamb I have been for the butcher to skin,
A witness without to the darkness within,
To every wail and to every grin,
As all of the numbers go marching on in.
A lamb with no shepherd, a brook with no sea,
A story with no one to tell it but me,
So here is the moral, for time is not long:
The world is a beast with a beautiful song.

The day it is done and the twilight is nigh,
The sun is replaced with a watchtower eye
and the clouds have been stained with an ominous dye,
Like the butcher has wiped off his knife on the sky.
The cold iron letters read "ARBEIT MACHT FREI"
and it may seem a lie but it’s hard to deny,
If your work is to try to forget how to cry
and your freiheit is found in a pit full of lye.
A lamb with no shepherd, a brook with no sea,
A story with no one to tell it but thee.
So tell me the moral, for time is not long,
and the world is a beast with a beautiful song.

Contributed by Bartleby - 2011/3/9 - 15:55




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