Red Cotton

Album: The Secret The Profane And Sugarcane (2009)
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  • I'm cutting up her pure white dress
    That I dyed red
    That I dyed red
    I'm putting scraps in cheap tin lockets
    What time erases and memory mocks
    I'll send them over the ocean foam
    Right into those gentle European homes

    The slave ship "Blessing" slipped from Liverpool
    Over the waves the Royal Navy rules
    To go and plunder the Kingdom of Benin
    Where certain history ends and shame begins

    Dahomey traders paid in powder and shot
    Line up their prisoners and they sell them in lots
    They packed them tight inside those coffin ships
    And took them to the brand new world of auction blocks and whips

    So I'm cutting up her pure white dress
    That I dyed red
    That I dyed red
    I'm putting scraps in cheap tin lockets
    What time erases and memory mocks
    I'll send them over the ocean foam
    Right into those gentle European homes

    White is the sheet on your fine linen bed
    The blood stained red on each cotton thread
    The merchants gather at St. George's Hall
    To unveil the kneeling slave who is carved upon the wall

    So picture the scene on the old Salt House docks
    Where they loaded the iron shackles and locks
    Between a sandstone crocodile, a barrel and a bale
    You will see the nameless faces they were offering for sale

    So, I sing the praises of God's glory
    As a blue cetacean floats in the basement
    An elephant on the second story
    They queue all day to see him
    In my American Museum

    But the Lord will judge us, with fire and thunder
    As man continues with all his blunders
    It's only money
    It's only numbers
    Maybe it is time to put aside these fictitious wonders

    And man is feeble
    Man is puny
    And if it should divide the Union
    There is no man who should own another
    When he can't even recognize his sister and his brother Writer/s: ELVIS COSTELLO
    Publisher: BMG Rights Management
    Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

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