Terry O'Leary - By Now You Have Forgot (To Whom It May Concern) lyrics

Remember all the Wise Men on their knees upon your yacht? With orphans on their backs they crawled (and others that they brought) Through rubble on the highway sands and residues of Lot. They came from severed cities selling postcards of your thoughts, Though offered for a penny piece, not even worth a jot. They asked "How are you feeling? What it is you want, you've got. You've scrawled behind your calling cards ‘I AM, but you are not', Though carved beneath the seven seas ‘Salvation can't be bought. Your fathers tried before you and your fathers came to naught.' "You started out by gelding goats and then by casting lots Of bodies to the battlefields, contorted, tight and taut, Then wallowed in the wake of trails the dervish devil trots. "With marching bands of fatherlands, and drums of Hottentots, You lure your legions in harm's way like giant juggernauts. Like Tweedle Dum your minions come, the sober and the sots, The troglodytes, barbarians, and mislead patriots, The Vandals, Huns and Hannibals and seaport Cypriots, The Japanese, the Congolese, the Indians and Scots, To vanquish bows and arrows, spears and catapulted shots Of those who build their bamboo huts for families now distraught, With withered wives with dried up breasts, and swollen babes in cots, Who swoon, engulfed in poison darts and vats of acid hot, Consumed by magic mushroom clouds, atomic megawatts. "In churches of your deities, your Holy Huguenots, Your Imams, Rabbis, Voodoo Dolls and Mitered Lancelots Lit wicked kindled candled walls in temples (while we fought) In mosques, cathedrals, synagogues to bless each new onslaught (Used pins and needles, magic spells on makeshift mock whatnots, With prayers for pipers, puppets, pawns and rigid armed robots) . "Upon your knees in golden naves, while peeking through the slots, You horded thirty silver pieces, downed a whiskey shot, Then crossed yourself and wrapped yourself in furs of ocelots, And danced on cleated cloven hoofs in purple polka-dots. "You've treated men like mongrels chained, like little flies to swat, By doing what you wanted to, instead of what you aught; You wiped your nose with dollar bills and paid your serfs with snot, But when you paused to preen your pride, you scrubbed a scarlet blot. "In ashes of our victories: the diamonds that you sought, The crocks of gold, the Golden fleece of bogus Argonauts, The mirrors of our lifelessness, the evils you begot. "The haunted leaves on winds of time have strewn a shallow plot Where now beneath the frozen stones the bodies lie and rot, Disintegrate, return to dust and feed Forget-Me-Nots In fields above the catacombs and tombs of Camelot. "A black and withered tree of d**h is rooted to the spot, Where oft beneath a bleeding moon you hid your gold in pots And buried them in barren bogs where roots of wormwood squat, Then drank your wine from chalice cups with pious afterthoughts. "While waiting at the river Styx, in twisted time untaught, From branches of the gallows tree, in recollections wrought, Your soul, like beggar's blankets, hangs in crazy quilted knots, With dangling pearls and diamond studs in dripping crimson clots, And gaping wounds and bulging eyes like fouling apricots, And wrapped in chains around your neck, the Reaper's grim garrote." That is the fate of all your kind, disclosed by Wise Men taught. But that was oh so long ago, by now you have forgot'.