Music |
by B. Blanke |
Words |
by Gudrun Blanke & |
B. Blanke |
Background vocals |
by Gudrun Blanke |
Lead vocals & all instuments |
by Lothlorien |
Artwork |
by Gudrun Blanke |
Carlos
There was too little rain for years
Half of their fields were already sere
And for that little that they still harvest
The big concerns pay less and less
That doesn’t accord with the law of demand and supply
But that’s just the way it is – the concerns dictate the price
The family was heavily in debt meantime
And their reserves would last just for a little while
There also were no jobs far and wide
One of them had to leave for work they decided
His elder brother was much needed on the farm, Juan was too young
So Carlos was sent to that Promised Land, the land of dreams for everyone
There’s a promised land in the north they say
Where everyone becomes rich and famed
Where the streets with gold are paved
But it ain’t true – the Promised Land, it ain’t
Everything the north gives, twice as much it takes,
For everything the north gives twice the price you pay.
He tried to cross the border on several ways
But they caught him time and again
And they brought him into a reception camp
Before they deported him back into his land
Finally his family borrowed even more money from the bank
To pay a human trafficker to smuggle Carlos into the Promised Land
They took his ID card first of all
And everything else except the clothes he wore
With twenty immigrants then he was pent-up
Hidden behind cases in a truck
It felt like days that they crouched like this in the dark
Without water, without food and almost stifling in that truck
There’s a promised land in the north they say
Where everyone becomes rich and famed
Where the streets with gold are paved
But it’s a lie – the Promised Land, it ain’t
Everything the north gives, twice as much it takes,
For everything the north gives twice the price you pay.
The first things they saw from the Promised Land
Was a shabby storehouse and men with guns in their hands
Their costs at the border were raised they said
Now the immigrants had to work for that
One of the immigrants tried to flee, but he was fairly weak
So that they caught him in a little while and they beat him up thoroughly
Now Carlos is working from dawn till dusk
In blazing heat, in rain or dust
He’s living in a barn with eight other men
Half of his wage he has to pay for the rent
Also the rest of the money they take
For the supposed debt and for food they say
For him there’s no back and no forth, caged in this foreign land
Harried by the yearning for his brothers and mom and dad
His promised land is in the south now he knows
Where his family lives - there is his home
The land of his yearning
Out of reach for him
There is nothing that the north gives, but everything it takes
There was nothing that the north gave, although he has to pay