Children of the Cold War

I met a caveman in the library
And i asked him, What was your life like?
He said, “For the most part, we were appropriately named.
Mostly we just hung around in caves, hoping for some food to come along.
And waiting for the dinosaur to die.

I met Moses in the tavern, and I bought him a beer
I said, Mo, there’s something that I’ve always wondered about.
For forty years you wandered in the desert, didn’t one among you
Think beforehand to have brought along some kind of map?
He said, We waited, that the ones who knew firsthand of slavery, would die out,
Be left behind, buried in the ground.
So that no one but the innocent could reach the Promised Land, we waited for the children of
slavery to die.

Now the young ones, the young ones
Begin their wandering through the desert
Through tv news, legal claims, and taxes
With one eye on the missiles, and one on the obituaries
Waiting for the children of the Cold War to die

Helmut Kohl and Maggie Thatcher
Yasser Arafat, George Bush and Gorbachev
Are of the desert, they will not pass through
They will leave their bones behind
To vanish into dust
And one day bloom again as wheat stalks
Beneath the boiling sun

As the young ones
Begin their wandering
Through crack houses, leveraged buyouts, TV news, legal claims and taxes
With one eye on the missiles, and one on the obituaries
Waiting for the children of the Cold War to die
One eye on the missiles, and one on the obituaries
Waiting for the children of the Cold War to die.

(lyrics: Dan Bern)

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