City of the Kings

Vultures are circling over the Plaza de Armas Making pitstops on the walls of the church Below a kid's trying to sell matches and candy But the competition is fierce Soldiers are hauling away the roadblocks Moving the warnings and the rusty chains Giving way to the old cars and the buses And the smog for which downtown is famed Cesar opens his eyes And rises from the bench In the City of the Kings He washes his face in the pond And heads out of the park In the City of the Kings There's been an earthquake For the third time this year A 6.8 on the Richter scale It made the cardboard houses outside city Collapse and fall to the foot of the hills They've asked the United Nations for help But no one wants to support this regime They know the aid is used for armour And extravaganzas for the brigade Cesar is walking with His brother on the streets In the City of the Kings They're looking for a way To make it through the day In the City of the Kings The Spanish houses still stand But they're scarred by the years that are gone Cesar lifts his brother up To let him look through the windows A bomb explodes near a government building And a stone statue loses its head It's the work of the Marxist guerrilla Who according to the army is dead Then the tanks roll back into the city Like they've done so often before They play their little tricks of terror In the vain hope that this time it will work Cesar is sleeping with His brother on a bench In the City of the Kings He dreams that the bench is a boat And it's sailing them away From the City of the Kings