Self Preservation

Make way for the rumbling tractor
We have a road to build
Your pleas you tears
A hopeless factor
There are holes to dig and to be filled
It's a graveyard so what's
The difference
We have our own work to do
Your dead cannot alter
Our indifference
Grave marauders, we may be to you
He was a boy merely seventeen
An unwilling young soldier
For the czar
And they tried to uproot
His tender heart
But they hadn't yet gotten very far
For though young he was firm
As an oaken bough
And unwilling to bend to their tries
To depart from the life
He had know till now
And their foolish ways he despised

Though the road we build
Is a long one
We toil in the hours of daylight
You can re-bury your precious bones
We'll let the tractors rest for the night
And alas you residents of earth
Who believed that this hole was your last
Until that great day of your rebirth
You can see that this has yet to pass

He barely lived on hoarded bread
But he never would touch their impure meat
And the thought filled
His noble heart with dread
And survival was a hopeful feat
Till they noticed his
Suddenly baggy clothes
And his hollow and
Small shrunken frame
And they said Jewish boy
Hey do you suppose
That the army is a game
You'll learn to eat the food you get
We'll stuff you till you're fat and stout
And beat the devil from you yet
We'll teach you what we're all about
Your laws your laws
They are a threat
A precedent that we can't have
I'll ram this down
Your stubborn throat
A piece of nice sweet suckling pig
A piece of nice sweet suckling pig
And you will wish you never lived
The day is short and I'm going home
To sleep with my fathers
And mothers
I am not the first to face
A choice of this sort
And I shall resist like the others
I so much want to live
But I don't have long to stay
Though I could easily swallow
And see another day
But they desire that I
Should succumb
To prove that a Jew can be broken
That we can be easily led
Away from our G-d
Our own road forgone and forsaken
I'm choking I can't breathe
But my thoughts are far away
The words my heart are saying
Shema Yisroel
These are the bones of my people
Who were decent and
Kind in their lives
Proudly they served their creator
Living humbly as
Husbands and wives
Now what's this
A body whole of flesh
Not a sign of a worm or decay
It looks like a boy about seventeen
And he looks like
He's buried yesterday
But the stone says
He died a martyr's death
And it was over a century ago
A soldier in the Czar's army
Who starved himself midst the plenty
Now the experts say
That the food we eat
Can prolong our lives on this earth
And this is true in so many ways
Take a look at how
Self-preservation can work
Make way for the rumbling tractor
We have a road to build

Make way for the rumbling tractor
We have a road to build

Make way for the rumbling tractor
We have a road to build

Make way for the rumbling tractor
We have a road