Forgotten Sons - Live At The Reading Festival 27/8/83 - Marillion

Armalite, street lights, nightsights

Searching the roofs for a sniper, a viper, a fighter

Death in the shadows he'll maim you, he'll wound you, he'll kill you

For a long forgotten cause, on not so foreign shores

Boys baptised in wars

Morphine, chill scream, bad dream

Serving as numbers on dogtags, flakrags, sandbags

Your girl has married your best friend, loves end, poison pen

Your flesh will always creep, tossing turning sleep

The wounds that burn so deep

Your mother sits on the edge of the world

When the cameras start to roll

Panoramic viewpoint resurrect the killing fold

Your father drains another beer, he's one of the few that cares

Crawling behind a Saracen's hull from the safety of his living room chair

Forgotten sons, forgotten sons, forgotten sons

And so as I patrol in the valley of the shadow of the tricolour

I must fear evil, for I am but mortal and mortals can only die

Asking questions, pleading answers from the nameless faceless watchers

That stalk the carpeted corridors of Whitehall

Who orders desecration, mutilation, verbal masturbation

I in the guarded bureaucratic wombs

Minister, minister care for your children, order them not into damnation

To eliminate those who would trespass against you

For whose is the kingdom, the power, the glory forever and ever, Amen

Halt who goes there, Death, approach friend

You're just another coffin on its way down the emerald aisle

When your children's stony glances mourn your death in a terrorist's smile

The bomber's arm placing fiery gifts on the supermarket shelves

Alley sings with shrapnel detonate a temporary hell

Forgotten Sons

From the dole queue to the regiment a profession in a flash

But remember Monday signings when from door to door you dash

On the news a nation mourns you unknown soldier, count the cost

For a second you'll be famous but labelled posthumous

Forgotten sons, forgotten sons

Peace on earth and mercy mild, Mother Brown has lost her child

Just another Forgotten Son