World John Hollingum
St Francis

The statue of St Francis in the picture was given to me by
my brother. He brought some of sculptures over from Brazil and this one
really took my fancy.

This is a song I wrote in 1989 or thereabouts. On the face of it, it is a song about Brazil in 1989, it is an external view, how Brazil looked to somebody who has never been there. But in the end it's more about how people in a privileged position sit in judgement over people who are up against it at the sharp end. It's about how, in the same predicament, we all tend to behave in similar ways and only our circumstances make us different.

Carved in a southern land
Improbable birds in each hand
With your beard and habit you stand
My little Saint Francis

With no samba in the air
Through you wooden eyes you stare
At me, but you see

Children, climbing up things that we grow in pots back here
Girls in their summer clothes that they wear all round the year
You see poor people on rubbish tips and the politically unsound
Simply gunned down
But that's just life over there

The church upon the hill
Is kept by the jesuits still
With opulent beauty and Christ upon their lips
And I think about the ships
And discarded bodies floating in the sea
But maybe

It's party every night and at every time of year
It's carnival and samba school and some stupidly cold beer
While the multinationals bleed 'em dry
And the national debt just goes sky high
But that's just life over there

Guitar

His holiness the pope. Doesn't bring to much hope
He says 'no' to liberation and the pill
But only time will tell; maybe Francis thinks he's mad as well
But hell, you've got
Gilberto Gil, you saw Pele score that goal
You've got Volkswagen beetles that run on alcohol
In the darkness of the forest
They're slashing and burning, killing and dying
But that's just life over there

And on Corcovado, Jesus stands
He looks down on them with outstretched hands
He says 'forgive them for they know not what they do'
Instead of them, it might just as well be you