October Twelfth Roy Harper

Why throw flowers on my grave when I'm dead?
Why paint pictures with the blood that I shed?
Why try to copy any word of what I said
When I hated you all when I was living?

Why do I waste time trying to create?
Why do I still try to communicate?
When you do nothing save coagulate
Making bad pretenses of pretending?

Why d'you just sit around counting the days?
Why do you act in so many fickle ways?
Why does it have to take all your types to make this world rotate
When almost all of you are hardly breathing?

And who can tell me what religion is for?
And which idiot thinks that irreligion is any more
Than just another product of that same religious sorе
That flows through time as through a retching body?

And how can you ban the bomb without first you ban thе war?
How can you ban the war without first you ban the peace?
Why does someone talk of peace and someone else of war
When each one is a product of the other?

And how many immortals did you ever see?
And how many gods do you think there can be?
And how much leaning post d'you need before you find the tree
Is dead and just about to fall upon you?