SHEEP AND GOATS
(BY MIKE QUIRKE)
Say mate, have you seen the mills where the kids at the loom spit blood?
Have you been in the mine when the firedamp blew?
Shipped as a hand with a freighter's crew or worked in a levy flood?
Have you rotted wet in a grazing camp or scorched in a desert line?
Have you done your night stint with your lamp, watching the timbers
drip with damp or hear the oil rig whine?
Have you had your pay held back for tools you never saw or could use?
Have you gone like a fool with the other fools to the bosses saloon
where the strong arm rules and cashed your time for booze?
I do no kicking at god or fate.
I keep my shoes for the road.
The long, gray road, and I love it, mate, hay-foot, straw-foot, that's my
gait, and I carry no other man's load.
I don't mind working to earn my bread and I'd just as soon keep straight,
But just like the preacher man said, I'm a ram and I've missed the gate.
But I'm jogging along, jogging ahead, perhaps I'll find it, mate.
FREIHEIT
Spaniens Himmel breitet seine Sterne
Ueber unsre Schutzengraeben aus,
Und der Morgen gruesst schon aus der Ferne
Bald geht es zum neuen Kampf hinaus
Die Heimat is weit,
Doch wir sind bereit.
Wir kaempfen und siegen fuer dich, Freiheit!
Dem Faschisten werden wir nicht weichen,
Schickt er auch die Kugeln hageldicht.
Mit uns stehn Kameraden ohne gleichen,
Und ein Rueckwaerts gibt es fuer uns nicht.
Ruehrt die Trommel. Faellt die Bajonettc.
Vorwarts marsch. Der Sieg is unser Lohn.
Mit der roten Fahne brecht die Kette.
Auf zum Kampf das Thaelmann Bataillon.