Money has become worthless.
People are flying planes into buildings.
Confusion is pandemic.
Freedom and ignorance do not rhyme.
Confusion is pandemic.
12,000 sq. k. of glacier ice and the man on the TV tells me
Tibet was always a part of China.
Even Inuit snow is laced with PCBs.
Who is running out of water?
Confusion, confusion, confusion is pandemic.
The ghost of black tulips haunts Wall Street,
And even the Dutch, land of Spinoza and Ockeghem,
no longer care about tolerance,
no longer care about the bright and happy light of lowland civility.
O my Amsterdam, filled with the now turbid waters
of an unsettled North Sea.
Confusion, confusion is pandemic.
Freedom and ignorance do not rhyme.
O my Amsterdam, city of tolerance,
city of enlightenment.
In the distance we hear the etherial sound
of Franklin’s harmonica of glass, the smile
of Mozart, the shimmer of alpine snow, it now is melting,
melting, before my eyes, my eyes.
Back stage, Jefferson tunes his violin. Don’t you hear?
But who would listen?
Things happen; With us or against us,
American trash floating down the Single…
Confusion, confusion, confusion is pandemic.
But who would hear my cry? my cry.
Go to hell, Mr. Minister, Mr. President.
Go to hell. Wearing full-metal jackets,
veils of self-righteous stupidity.
When even angels do not listen,
confusion is pandemic,
When even angels do not, do not:—
iisten.
[written in dejection after another victory in Holland
of the anti-dutch Dutch party, the PVV]