La Colombe

(Album: In My Life - 1966)

Why all these bugles crying
For squads of young men drilled
To kill and to be killed
And waiting by this train?
Why the orders loud and hoarse
Why the engine's groaning cough
As it strains to drag us off
Into the holocaust?
Why crowds who sing and cry
And shout and fling us flowers
And trade their right for ours
To murder and to die?

The dove has torn her wings
So no more songs of love
We are not here to sing
We're here to kill the dove

Why has this moment come
When childhood has to die
When hope shrinks to a sigh
And speech into a drum?
Why are they pale and still
Young boys trained overnight
Conscripts forced to fight
And dressed in gray to kill?
These rain clouds massing tight
This train load battle bound
This moving burial ground sent
Thundering toward the night

The dove has torn her wings
So no more songs of love
We are not here to sing
We're here to kill the dove

Why statues towering brave
Above the last defeat
Old word and lies repeat
Across the new made grave?
Why the same still birth
That victory always brought
These hoards of glory bought
By men with mouths of earth?
Dead ash without a spark
Where cities glittered bright
For guns probe every light
And crush it in the dark

The dove has torn her wings
So no more songs of love
We are not here to sing
We're here to kill the dove

And why your face undone
With jagged lines of tears
That gave in those first years
All peace I ever won?
Your body in the gloom
The platform fading back
Your shadow on the track
A flower on a tomb
And why these days ahead
When I must let you cry
And live prepared to die
As if our love were dead?

The dove has torn her wings
So no more songs of love
We are not here to sing
We're here to kill the dove