"Farewell to Pripchat"
by Tim Donnehy
as sung by John McDermott
It was a Friday in April, 1986
The day that the nightmare began.
When the dust it fell down on our buildings and streets,
And entered our buildings at noon.
Touched the grass and the trees, bicycles, cars,
Beds, books and picture frames too:
We stood around helpless, confused,
nobody knew what to do.
At 2:00 Sunday the buses arrived...
a fleet of a thousand or more.
We were ordered to be on our way
not knowing what lay in store.
Some of our citizens fled in dismay
and looked for a good place to hide.
When 4:00 came and the last bus pulled out
'twas the day that our lively town died.
Chorus:
And the shirts, sheets and handkerchiefs crack in the wind,
on the window ledge the withering plants.
And the Ladas and Volgas are parked by the doors,
and the bike's in its usual stance.
Our evergreen tree lies withered and drooped.
They've poisoned our once-fertile land.
The streets speak a deafening silence...
Nothing stirs but the sand.
A visit back home is so eerie today:
a modern Pompeii in view.
To see all the old shops and the Forest Hotel
and the Pronyet cinema too.
The mementos we gather were all left behind,
our photos and letters and cards.
The toys of our children, untouchable now,
toy soldiers left standing on guard.
So fare thee well, Pripchat, my home and my soul:
your sorrow can know no relief.
A terr'fying glimpse of the future you show
your children all scattered like geese.
The clothesline still sways, but the owner's long gone
as the nomadic era returns.
The questions in black and white blurred into grey...
The answer's too easy to learn.
(repeat chorus twice)
4 comments:
And some in Saskatchewan are not only calling for a reactor here, but for us to store nuclear waste. Not in my backyard.
Well, not like I'm Nuke-em-All Nick or anything, but the Chernobyl reactors were inherently flawed. Our CANDU technology is miles ahead. As I said in an earlier post, I think nuclear is the best of a bad lot...that doesn't make it perfect, or even particularly good.
I was in Hungary at the time this happened and we were told NOTHING. We still drank the water and swam and played in the grass and ate lettuce... Then my friend's guinea pig died suddenly and I heard of several other small animal deaths, but didn't think anything of it. Finally, probably because it was all over the news on the West and there was no way to hide it any longer, they announced on tv that there was an "accident" and advised people not to eat fresh vegetables out of their garden for a "few days". There were NEVER any statistics done, let alone released about how many people were diagnosed with cancer after that, or how many babies were born with disabilities or malformations, or anything like that...
I think the Soviet Union entered its death throes at that moment. They didn't say a word to anybody at all for what, three days? Longer? Unbelieveable.
You were lucky, very lucky.
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