In the summer that my son was born In the same unchanging town that fathered me I retraced many steps trying to fit my own footsteps Is it the truth perhaps there is no return Political lies, political promises This shadow everywhere, the sense of powerlessness And you and I left stumbling in their blindness The blindness of Wall Street, Moscow, and White Hall How many miles I walked by the union can*l Thinking of the hands that made it, the hands of the navies Thinking of the patient horses that pulled along the barges Whose tow ropes have rubbed groves on the pillars of the bridges And I thought this "What rubs you rubs me" Political lies, political promises This shadow everywhere, the sense of powerlessness And you and I left waiting in the history A history of mystery, a history of betrayal All along the banks of the union can*l I walked in the flaming sunset of a summer's evening Scottish skin head, glue head, Scottish flag, the tune in his head Looks at the sky and asks me "What does it mean?" Political lies, political promises This shadow everywhere, the sense of powerlessness And you and I left basking in the anguish The anguish of those we have failed to hear In the night I listen to my own darkness I think being born and dying have the same tax bases I think about the signature of God on the prison And about following sides and becoming lost again Political lies, political promises This shadow everywhere, the sense of powerlessness And you and I left with the same old question The sheer unspeakable strangeness of being here at all