Red Cotton Lyrics - Secret, Profane And Sugarcane - Elvis Costello

I'm cutting up her pure white dress 

That I dyed red, that I dyed red 

I'm putting scraps in cheap tin lockets 

What time erases and memory mocks 

I'll send them over the ocean foam 

Right into those gentle European homes 

The slave ship 'Blessing' slipped from Liverpool 

Over the waves the Royal Navy rules 

To go and plunder the Kingdom of Benin 

Where certain history ends and shame begins 

Dahomey traders paid powder and shots 

Line up their prisoners, sell them in lots 

They packed them tight inside those coffin ships 

And they took them to the brand new world 

Of auction blocks and whips 

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So I'm cutting up her pure white dress 

That I dyed red, that I dyed red 

I'm putting scraps in cheap tin lockets 

What time erases and memory mocks 

I'll send them over the ocean foam 

Right into those gentle European homes 

White is the sheet on your fine linen bed 

The blood stained red on each cotton thread 

The merchants gathered at St. George's Hall 

To unveil the kneeling slave 

Who is carved upon the wall 

Picture the scene at the Old Salt House docks 

They loaded the iron shackles and locks 

Between a sandstone crocodile, a barrel and a bale 

You will see the nameless faces 

They were offering for sale 

Photos 

So I sing the praises of God's glory 

As a blue cetacean floats in the basement 

An elephant on the second storey 

And they queue all day to see him 

In my American Museum 

But the Lord will judge us with fire and thunder 

As man continues with all his blunders 

It's only money, it's only numbers 

Maybe it is time to put aside these fictitious wonders 

But man is feeble, man is puny 

And if it should divide the union 

There is no man who should own another 

When he can't even recognize his sister and his brother