When the Horseman Came

Written on the first night of mandatory Covid lockdown. Soundcloud.

Em Am
They named us all redundancies
B7 Em
The new machines and cheaper lands
Em Am 
Shipped the plant over the seas
Am B7
They took the hammers from our hands 

The hospital where you were born 
Was losing funds, they sold a wing 
To pharmaceutical concerns 
And prisons solve all other things 

G Am 
And when the Horseman came again
D Em
Wrapped in linen shrouds of white
B7
Was he recognized by men?
B7 Em 
Or overtake us in the night? 

And when the virus set the spark
At first an ember then a blaze
It spread like butchers in the dark
Death scented on the smoky haze 
It stole the breath out of our blood
Like wildfire through them all-
The workshop, prison, and the camp 
While others stayed behind the wall

And when the Horseman came again, 
And lifted up the broken keen
Was is it Birkenau we heard, 
Or Kharkiv, or Skibereen? 

Take a walk along the wall 
Between the towers and the ruins 
We watched them rust, we watched them fall
The bloody sun, the iron moon
The banks are empty, morgues are full 
They'll never let the market die 
Essential and expandable 
It is not ours to question why 

And when the Horseman comes again, 
What crown of arrows will he don? 
Will we have learned to bar the door, 
Or let the fires carry on?