The Kelly Song Collective

Barcelona

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He said he loved a girl in Barcelona.

He slid an olive branch through her hair.

He cried at the fall of Catalonia

with Nazi bastards laughing in the air.

 

They read Lorca on the seaside,

making love to Gypsy Balladeer.

She cried when they heard how he died,

that Andalusian, gypsy, poet queer.

 

Don’t cry.  It’ll be alright.

Be mine tonight.

Let’s go, fuck Franco.

I don’t know about Seville.

I just want to save our little hill.

 

He set the bomb on San Miguel in Toledo.

He shot a dozen fascists while they prayed.

A curse on FDR and his tuxedo

‘cause Salamanca’s dying where she laid.

 

She sang The Deep Song in Bilbao,

Spanish wine, weep and wail guitars.

Her body moved like water from the Ebro.

Her feet moved like the winking evening stars.

 

Her lost her trying to save Barcelona

in January, 1939.

The ships are in the sea off Catalonia,

doing nothing, killing time.

 

Now he sits and hums The Internationale

sixty years from Barcelona’s eyes.

Every Labour Day he joins a rally

and hears her voice rise up through Spanish skies.

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© Audsongs 2002