Mother and Child
©2007 Gibbens/Weston

There’s a woman down on her knees down by the roadside.
She’s thrown that little white handbag aside
And she’s holding on to her child
Where the stones and bricks are piled
And the cars go rolling by despite her grief.

She looks up into the sky that’s filled with darkness
And she looks away from Mecca to the west.
She says, Every life must end
But, Lord, why did you send
The day when I must see him die myself?

The horns are blazing on those passing Hondas
As she brushes down his hair with a trembling hand.
Where the river runs underground
With a distant troubled sound
She’d dipped him in the waters that ward off death.

His father was a stranger and remained one.
On the day his son was born they said he’d gone.
But as the boy became a man,
However wild he ran,
She knew that he was blessed above the rest.

Down the hungry streets on which she raised him
Guns and drugs had kept the chances slim
And the cost of living high
And heroes in short supply
But he walked a finer line than anyone else.

But they caught him unawares beyond the precinct
And they gunned him down at once to keep the peace.
Now she’s holding on to her child
Where the moon shines undefiled
And the muezzins chant to those Carmelite bells.

By the stone that keeps the waters from the waters,
By the holy feet that trod upon that rock,
By the navel of the world,
Into hell may they be hurled
Who sent the boy into the arms of God.

It’s the song that you can hear in any nation,
It’s the background noise to every front.
By the borders we defend
Show me where Golgotha ends
And the garden where the stone’s been rolled away.

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