CHARITY BEGINS AT ROME

Paul Lawler

My belly it is swollen; I’m sorry I can’t stand
The food I want I cannot get from this barren land
For your well-intentioned powdered milk
Thanks, but don’t you see
That sipping life just once a week prolongs my agony.

   And the Pope said : Happy Christmas
   Happy Easter, everyone
   In Nomine Patris
   Et fillet mignon

If you’d sent an IUD to stop brother, or a tractor for my dad
I may not have made it to my teens, but, I might have been a lad
A drilling rig for water could save parts of this land
I cannot eat the secondhand clothes sold by thieving bands.

If Rome had sent some help to us, here in the Sudan
Their supposed Christian ethic, might have helped me be a man
But Catholics is politics, a sham, a bloody lie
The Vatican grows rich and fat, but as for me I die.


©   Paul O. Lawler,   Darwin, 1985


1985 famine news :
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/feb/08/famine-refugees-united-nations-sudan-ethiopia-africa


This song hasn’t made it to Paul’s posthumous YT channel yet – but one day soon!


R-J