It’s midnight at the oasis and nobodies here
The light from the night fires makes everything look scared
And a baby cries solo
And nobody hears it but me, god and fear
I wake to find dreaming is all that I got
Yesterday is over, it’s just a bullet-hole in the head
And there’s no hallelujah
The Baghdad café is dead
The poets all broken, their words told as lies
The savants and the storytellers quiet as they come
This is no revolution
They painted Sinbad on a bomb
The trees of Babylon are burning
And this world is turning away
From the Baghdad crusade
The weight of my genius is more than I can bear
I moved out of my mind, sanctions, bombs, books and tears
There’s blood in my eyes
Ten tons of war today
This once ancient city as delicate as prose
Had its books burned by infidels, piles of bodies by the side of roads
My epitaph unknown
There’ll be no going home
The hospitals all broken from the policies of the world
Are your prayers any stronger than the ones we say
My quarrelsome cry
No children were born today
I walk libertine back streets that no armoured cars can ride
The city of peace all broken and bled
Smells the souk rise
The Baghdad café is filled with the dead
The tortured and hunted and hopeless are freed
To go fight a war bring back home bountiful greed
They bomb us at night
For your money we bleed
The light from the night fires makes everything look scared
And a baby cries solo
And nobody hears it but me, god and fear
I wake to find dreaming is all that I got
Yesterday is over, it’s just a bullet-hole in the head
And there’s no hallelujah
The Baghdad café is dead
The poets all broken, their words told as lies
The savants and the storytellers quiet as they come
This is no revolution
They painted Sinbad on a bomb
The trees of Babylon are burning
And this world is turning away
From the Baghdad crusade
The weight of my genius is more than I can bear
I moved out of my mind, sanctions, bombs, books and tears
There’s blood in my eyes
Ten tons of war today
This once ancient city as delicate as prose
Had its books burned by infidels, piles of bodies by the side of roads
My epitaph unknown
There’ll be no going home
The hospitals all broken from the policies of the world
Are your prayers any stronger than the ones we say
My quarrelsome cry
No children were born today
I walk libertine back streets that no armoured cars can ride
The city of peace all broken and bled
Smells the souk rise
The Baghdad café is filled with the dead
The tortured and hunted and hopeless are freed
To go fight a war bring back home bountiful greed
They bomb us at night
For your money we bleed
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