(SmithRay)

Suffer not Your neighbor's affliction

Suffer not Your neighbor's paralysis

But extend your hand Extend your hand

Lest you vanish in the city And be but a trace

Just a vanished ghost And your legacy

All the things you knew Science, mathematics, thought

Severely weakened Like irrigation systems

In the tired veins forming From the Tigris and Euphrates

In the realm of peace All the world revolved

All the world revolved Around a perfect circle

City of Baghdad City of scholars

Empirical humble Center of the world

City in ashes City of Baghdad

City of Baghdad Abrasive aloof



Oh, in Mesopotamia Aloofness ran deep

Deep in the veins of the great rivers

That form the base Of Eden

And the tree The tree of knowledge

Held up its arms To the sky

All the branches of knowledge All the branches of knowledge

Cradling Cradling

Civilization In the realm of peace

All the world revolved Around a perfect circle

Oh Baghdad Center of the world

City of ashes With its great mosques

Erupting from the mouth of god Rising from the ashes like

a speckled bird Splayed against the mosaic sky

Oh, clouds around We created the zero

But we mean nothing to you You would believe

That we are just some mystical tale We are just a swollen belly

That gave birth to Sinbad, Scheherazade We gave birth

Oh, oh, to the zero The perfect number

We invented the zero And we mean nothing to you

Our children run through the streets

And you sent your flames Your shooting stars

Shock and awe Shock and awe

Like some, some Imagined warrior production

Twenty-first century No chivalry involved

No Bushido



Oh, the code of the West Long gone

Never been Where does it lie?

You came, you came Throu