Deportees (2006 Reissue Bonus Track)

(album: Talking With The Taxman About Poetry - 1986)

The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges are piled in their creosote dumps
Flying us back to the Mexican border
Spend all our money to wade back again

Father's own father, he waded that river
It took all the money he made in his life
My brothers and sisters come to work in the fruit trees
And they ride the trucks 'til they took down and died

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
And all they will call you will be deportees

Some of us are illegal and others not wanted
Our work contract's out and we've got to move on
Six hundred miles to the Mexican border
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves

We died in your hills and we died in your deserts
We died in your valleys, we died in your plains
We died 'neath your trees, we died in your oceans
Both sides of the river and we died just the same

Skyplane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon
A fireball of lightning, it shook all our hills
Who are these friends who are scattered like dry leaves
The radio says they are just deportees

Is this the best way we can grow big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
Scattered like dry leaves that rot on your topsoil
We're known by no name except deportees