Roger Waters

A few years ago, an Italian journalist from a Florentine newspaper, involved in the Iniziativa contro la tortura, which is the initiative against torture in Northern Italy, sent some lyrics written by a South American man who had been tortured. The English translation (which represents the first stanza of the song) proved to be very moving, and was set to music. The words remained untouched.. Until Kosovo.

The London Times had a piece which told the story of a Serbian soldier who saw an Albanian woman lying wounded in a burned-out building. He left his platoon, went over and helped her, and then joined his men and marched off. There was sense in that image. The rest of the song is about that.

Not the torturer will scare me
Nor the body's final fall
Nor the barrels of death's rifles
Nor the shadows on the wall
Nor the night when to the ground
The last dim star of pain, is held
But the blind indifference
Of a merciless unfeeling world
Lying in the burnt out shell
Of some Albanian farm
An old Babushka
Holds a crying baby in her arms
A soldier from the other side
A man of heart and pride
Breaks ranks, lays down his rifle
And kneels by her side
He binds her wounds
He gives her food
And calms the crying child
She gives him absolution then
Across the great divide
He picks his way back through the broken
China of her life
And there at the kerb
The samaritan Serb turns..
Turns and waves.. goodbye
And each small candle
Lights a corner of the dark...
When the wheel of pain stops turning
And the branding iron stops burning
When the children can be children
When the desperados weaken
When the sea rolls into greet them
When the natural law of science
Greets the humble and the mighty
And the billion candles burning
Lights the dark side of every human mind
Each small candle
Lights a corner of the dark...