《Red Cotton(Album Version)》歌词

[00:00:00] Red Cotton - Elvis Costello

[00:00:15] I'm cutting up her pure white dress

[00:00:23] That I dyed red

[00:00:27] That I dyed red

[00:00:30] I'm putting scraps in cheap tin lockets

[00:00:38] What time erases and memory mocks

[00:00:45] I'll send them over the ocean foam

[00:00:53] Right into those gentle European homes

[00:01:07] The slave ship blessing slipped from Liverpool

[00:01:14] Over the waves the Royal Navy rules

[00:01:21] To go and plunder the Kingdom of Benin

[00:01:27] Where certain history ends and shame begins

[00:01:35] Dahomey traders paid in powder and shot

[00:01:41] Line up their prisoners sell them in lots

[00:01:48] They packed them tight inside those coffin ships

[00:01:54] And they took them to the brand new world of

[00:01:58] Auction blocks and whips

[00:02:02] I'm cutting up her pure white dress

[00:02:10] That I dyed red

[00:02:14] That I dyed red

[00:02:18] I'm putting scraps in cheap tin lockets

[00:02:25] What time erases and memory mocks

[00:02:32] I'll send them over the ocean foam

[00:02:40] Right into those gentle European homes

[00:02:50] White is the sheet on your fine linen bed

[00:02:57] The blood stained red on each cotton thread

[00:03:04] The merchants gather at St George's Hall

[00:03:09] To unveil the kneeling slave who is carved upon the wall

[00:03:20] Picture the scene at the old salt house docks

[00:03:26] They loaded the iron shackles and locks

[00:03:33] Between a sandstone crocodile a barrel and a bale

[00:03:39] You will see the nameless faces they were offering for sale

[00:03:50] So I sing the praises of god's glory

[00:03:58] As a blue cetacean floats in the basement

[00:04:05] An elephant on the second storey

[00:04:12] And they queue all day to see him

[00:04:16] In my American museum

[00:04:25] But the lord will judge us with fire and thunder

[00:04:32] As man continues in all his blunders

[00:04:39] It's only money

[00:04:43] It's only numbers

[00:04:47] Maybe it is time to put aside these fictitious wonders

[00:04:59] But man is feeble

[00:05:03] Man is puny

[00:05:07] And if it should divide the union

[00:05:15] There is no man that should own another

[00:05:22] When he can't even recognize his sister and his brother