(Words & music Jeremy Taylor)
Let me tell you 'bout this funny dream I had the other night
Wasn't funny at the time, gave me quite a fright
I'd had a hard day at the office fixing up a deal
I was glad to drink a double Scotch before my evening meal
And I said as my wife turned out the light
I said, Well, honey, I'm gonna need my sleep tonight
My head sank in the pillow and I dozed off right away
Thinking about the deal I had been making in the day
It was an eight per cent investment loan in a finance company
I'd doubled up my stake in some onshore property
And my oil shares rose two point in the day
So really I was doing okay
I dreamed I was invited by the board of EMI
IBM invited me to join them by and by
I got a call from General Motors, from Shell and IPC
They all said they were looking for someone just like me
So soon we were together holding hands
Dancing ring-a-ring-a-roses on the sand
So round and round the cauldron we danced all through the night
Singing loud hosannas, our future looked so bright
Profit margins rocketed before our very eyes
Our piggy banks in Switzerland reached right up to the skies
And we sang with a loud and cheerful sound
May peace and prosperity abound
Then I looked into the cauldron, and there what did I see
A million starving faces were staring up at me
Get back into the pot, I cried, throwing in the salt
Don't shake that angry fist at me, you know it's not my fault
Just because you did not make it big
That doesn't mean to say that I'm a pig
Then I heard the cry of Indians looking for their land
Saw whole herds of buffalo bein' slaughtered out of hand
I heard the wail of Eskimoes in the darkness of their days
Lamenting for the spirit of their old ancestral ways
It's tough I said you couldn't stand the pace
I was in a hurry but I needed all the space
Then I saw a million eyes that shed a million tears
I heard a million gunshots split a million ears
I saw Hottentots and bushmen pleading on the sand
A million voices crying out, We do not understand
What else I said is there for you to know
When you gotta go you gotta go
Then a million fingers pointes straight at me
A thousand dying species smiled reproachfully
They said, Our loss is your loss, would you not be so vain
Once we are destroyed we cannot come back again
And when we are all vanished from our homes
You'll have to make do with your garden gnomes
Then rising from the cauldron came a sweaty hangman's rope
The lying tongue of president, the conscience of a pope
The furrowed brow of Protestant doing what he should
The groaning loins of Calvinist just trying to be good
The suicide whose business made a loss
He just couldn't get a loan from his boss
I saw the brain of tortured writer who died of mental cramp
The methylated liver from the stomach of a tramp
The tiny battered baby dashed onto the floor
Mother at her wits' end couldn't take it any more
The old man in the city so alone
He'd prefer to stay inside a mental home
And then I saw myself and I didn't want to know
I was toothless at the dentist, eyeless at the show
I was handless in the audience, tuneless at the score
I was hairless at the barber, I was senseless on the floor
I didn't have a partner at the ball
I was oh so alone-e in the fall
I was funless in the pleasure dome, sexless on the bed
I was painless on the cross, I was brainless in the head
I was childless at the christening, restless at the wake
I was tearless at the burial, there was nothing left to take
I'd reaped everything there was to sow
There was nothing left that could grow
So in the scented crematorium they stripped my body bare
The ashes of my charred remains were scattered here and there
Across this super-heated globe with its concrete super-crust
I died my super-market death and turned to super-dust
And the drive-in chapel priest was saying a prayer
While all the lavish? congregation sat and stared
Oh enough enough I cried, and cried, Don't show me any more
I've seen enough I tell you, I'll give it to the poor
Then I woke up - it was morning, the sun was in the sky
Thank God it was a dream I said and heaved a heavy sigh
And I called up my broker right away and said
Mister Rawlinson, I'm in a buying mood today
As sung by Iain MacKintosh
