How Does It Feel? lyrics

Song information

Artist: Crass
Album: Best Before

Lyrics

When you woke this morning you looked so rocky-eyed
Blue and white normally, but strange ringed like that in black
It doesn't get much better, your voice can get just ripped up shooting in vain
Maybe someone hears what you say, but you're still on your own at night
You've got to make such a noise to understand the silence
Screaming like a jackass, ringing ears so you can't hear the silence
Even when it's there - like the wind seen from the window
Seeing it, but not being touched by it

(We never asked for war, nor in the innocence of our birth were we aware of it
We never asked for war, nor in the struggle to realisation did we feel there was a need for it
We never asked for war, nor in the joyful colours of our childhood were we conscious of its darkness.)

How does it feel?
How does it feel to be the mother of a thousand death?
Young boys rest now, cold graves in cold earth
How does it feel to be the mother of a thousand death?
Sunken eyes, lost now; empty sockets in futile death

Your arrogance has gutted these bodies of life
Your deceit fooled them that it was worth the sacrifice
Your lies persuaded people to accept the wasted blood
Your filthy pride cleansed you of the doubt you should have had
You smile in the face of the death cause you are so proud and vain
Your inhumanity stops you from realising the pain
That you inflicted, you determines, you created, you ordered -
It was your decision to have those young boys slaughtered

You never wanted peace or solution
From the start you lusted after war and destruction
Your blood-soaked reason ruled out other choices
Your mockery gagged more moderate voices
So keen to play your bloody part, so impatient that your war be fought
Iron lady with your stone heart so eager that the lesson be taught
That you inflicted, you determines, you created, you ordered -
It was your decision to have those young boys slaughtered

How does it feel to be the mother of a thousand death?
Young boys rest now, cold graves in cold earth
How does it feel to be the mother of a thousand death?
Sunken eyes, lost now; empty sockets in futile death

Throughout our history you and your kind
Have stolen the young bodies of the living
To be twisted and torn in filthy war
What right have you to defile those birth?
What right have you to devour that flesh?
What right to spit on hope with the gory madness
That you inflicted, you determines, you created, you ordered -
It was your decision to have those young boys slaughtered

How does it feel to be the mother of a thousand death?
Young boys rest now, cold graves in cold earth
How does it feel to be the mother of a thousand death?
Sunken eyes, lost now; empty sockets in futile death

You accuse us of disrespect for the dead
But it was you who slaughtered out of national pride
Just how much did you care? what respect did you have
As you sent those bodies to their communal grave?
You buried them rough-handed, they'd given you their all
That once living flesh defiled in the hell
That you inflicted, you determines, you created, you ordered -
It was your decision to have those young boys slaughtered

You use those deaths to achieve your ends still
Using the corpses as a moral blackmail
You say "think of what those young men gave"
As you try to bind us in your living death
Yet we do think of them, ice cold and silence
In the snow covered moorlands, stopped by the violence
That you inflicted, you determines, you created, you ordered -
It was your decision to have those young boys slaughtered

How does it feel to be the mother of a thousand death?
Young boys rest now, cold graves in cold earth
How does it feel to be the mother of a thousand death?

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - we don't want your fucking war!
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - we don't want your fucking war!
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - we don't want your fucking war!
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 you can stop your fucking war!