The Endless Roads by McGrath of Harlow
(For the chords, click here)

McGrath's Comments:  A song about what is chillingly called "ethnic cleansing" these days.  When I wrote this it was happening in another part of what had been Yugoslavia.  Now it's Kosovo.  But the list in verse two could (and has) included so many places.  Today's refugees turn into tomorrow's persecutors.  Croats who've been driven from their homes in turn drive out Serbs who in turn drive out Albanians, who frive out Serbs.  Survivors of the Holocaust drive Palestinians from their homes.   I wish I could believe that this is a song that wouldn't keep on being topical.  The tune I sing it to is not unlike that of "The Bleacher Lassie of Kelvinhaugh", which would be a good tune to use for it anyway.


Chorus:
Here is a journey without an ending, 
Through rugged mountains and snow and ice.
Can there be victory in such a struggle?
Can there be freedom, at such a price?

To our lost homes there is no returning,
the stranger dwells where we lived so long
and a bitter taste now is all that's left now
of that lost land which is forever gone.
A last farewell now to all we've known now,
now, we turn our backs as we turn the wheel.
We turn our backs now on our burning homes now,
the broken past and the killing fields.

Here is a journey without an ending, 
through rugged mountains and snow and ice.
Can there be victory in such a struggle? 
Can there be freedom, at such a price?

From Sarajevo to far Soweto,
from Guatamala and Belfast,
from Sad Kosovo, and the Warsaw Ghetto,
with empty hands, and a heart of glass.
To Babylon we were carried captive, 
from Palestine, where the stranger rules, 
we eat our bread now in this house of exile, 
where the strong grow weak, and the wise are fools.

Here is a journey without an ending, 
through rugged mountains and snow and ice.
Can there be victory in such a struggle? 
Can there be freedom, at such a price?

And those who'd kill us were once our brothers, 
and those who help us may yet be foes,
to take their turn place on this wheel of hatred, 
that drives us out down those endless roads. 
And so it goes, will it be forever 
till the wheel stops and the madness ends? 
Look down in pity on this world of exiles, 
and teach us some way we can start again.

Here is a journey without an ending, 
through rugged mountains and snow and ice.
Can there be victory in such a struggle? 
Can there be freedom, at such a price?

Kevin McGrath - 12th May 1993