Eulogy (for a black person) is his second album, and features contributions by Paul Kelly and The Messengers

This is the Song Cycles (Kev's own record label) reissue.

Eulogy for a Black Person

Elly

Elly wrapped her nineteen years
In a coat from ’41
Had the looks that’d make a grown man sigh
From the Diamantina River country
She crossed the dry mid west
From her childhood schemes and sheltered dreams
She broke the ties

The commercial man made blunt demands
As they travelled south by east
Elly turned into a woman over night
He set her down in the heart of town 
The millionaires retreat
She gazed up at the tall glass and concrete walls
At Main St. Surfers Paradise

CHORUS
If the decks been marked before the deal
You learn to compromise
Or you get to know the cool hand with the dice 
You learn to live off losers, for they make the mistakes twice
You’re living in high society but you’re street wise
Just to survive, just to survive

With those centrefold looks
And bay-blue eyes
Man she stacked them in
All the senators and doctors called her Madam
With her fifteen girls she built a world
A pleasured paradise
On what a man of God would call the wages of sin

CHORUS

A wealthy woman
Drinks with diamond rings 
Twenty stories high 
Gazes out as the sun lifts from the sea
To make it to the top
Elly sacrificed the lot
And found that seven figure sum was far too high a fee

CHORUS

I’ve Been Moved

I’ve been moved by the wind upon the waters
And the shadows as the leaves are blown
When that old wind moans
On a weary winter Sunday
Like a friend that keeps on knocking on my home

I’ve been moved by the crying of the newborn
The honey sweetness of the air in spring
I’ve watched the moonlight flood 
Across them sleepy hills and valleys
Heard the sadness in her requiem

I’ve been moved watching nature slowly turning
Through the seasons and the patterns that she brings 
And as the morning star proceeds
The breaking of a new day
You’ll find the black crow is already on the wing

I’ve been moved watching something that’s been suffering
Be it humankind or any living thing
From the fury of the storm 
That old parched ground is reborn
And the deserts blooms’d satisfy a king

I’ve been moved by the tireless sea a churning
And them scarlets of an inland dusk 
When a close friend has died
I turned away and cried
As they laid ‘em down and shovelled in the dust

Eulogy (for a Black Person)

Lay me down in the sacred ground
Keep me from the cold
Keep me in the deep warm Earth
Where the stars can see my soul 
Take me where them trees stand tall
By the waters in the river bend
Let me face the rising sun
Commend my spirit to the wind
Make no monuments or mortal crowns
Or speak my name again when you lay me down

Lay me where the forest blooms
In the land that’s seen no plough
Where the fragrance on the western wind
Is carried from every spring time flower 
Give me peace and give me rest
Lay me down on the mountain crest
Bury me softly without a sound
Let the scrub grow back across that mound
Make no monuments or mortal crowns 
Or speak my name again when you lay me down

Bury me quick and bury me deep
Without no coffin or shrouded sheet
Wrap me in the Mother Earth
So I can nurture the lands rebirth
Give me joy and give me song
Carry the struggle wide and long
Do not grieve and do not weep mortal memories are all we keep
make no monuments or mortal crowns
Or speak my name again when you lay me down

Let the winter dew fall on that grave
Let me see the night sky blaze
See the moon in the winters wane
Knifing through that cosmic maze 
Give me water give me fire
Don’t give me monuments of stone
Give me rainbows in the sky 
Give me back my land in which to lie
Make no monuments or mortal crowns 
Or speak my name again when you lay me down

Cannot Buy My Soul

For 200 years us blacks are beaten down here too long on the dole
My dignity I’m losing here and mentally I’m old
There’s a system here that nails us ain’t we left out in the cold
They took our life and liberty friend but they couldn’t buy our soul

Joe Hill died, Che Gevera fought and Pemulwuy lay down dead
If a person speaks out critically here you can get loaded down with lead
How long can the majority wait for their story to unfold 
They took their life and liberty friend but they could not buy their soul

The cleverman spoke precisely, humanity he said was done
It’s creed of greed could not proceed if our struggle’s to be won
For humanity’s more important here than that constant quest for gold
You may take life and liberty friend but you cannot buy our soul

Jesus woke one morning, rode a donkey up through the gate
He could see quite clearly he was going to face his fate
And the powers that be, could see that he, could not be bought or sold 
They took his life and liberty friend but they could not buy his soul

Sexual Teaser

You say she conjures illusions
And that you’re tethered on the brink boy 
You’re cup full of fantasies
From which you cannot drink

Silk stockings and stepins
A male stereotyped norm
Most men can’t tell the difference
between love, sex and porn

CHORUS
Your disguised fire of desire fails to deceive her
Why then malign and define her as a sexual teaser 
Cos she says oh uh uh uh aah (no sex boy)

Your wife, sister or daughter 
They’re humankind just like you boy
Women are not just playthings
That you have soul access to

Your disguised fire of desire fails to deceive her
Why then malign and define her as a sexual teaser

Your love is all lust boy
To you sex is a game
Your male ego is fed on
Each female you’ve lain

She sees through your façade boy
Your male macho man tactics
Your techniques of deceit
Why should she fuck you for practice, yeah

Your disguised fire of desire fails to deceive her
Why then malign and define her as a sexual teaser 
Cos she says uh uh uh aah (no sex boy)
Uh uh uh aah (I’m no joy toy boy)

Tom Shane

My husband Tom Shane was a powder man
Worked at the face in the mine
Twenty-six years old he knew nothing but coal
A cut lunch and to clock in on time

Monday through Sunday is a work a day week 
Three shifts a day in the shafts
Saturday a miner gives rest to his bones 
Sunday the night shift would start

It’s hammer and tap to drive the drills in 
And blast a sweat track through the ground
Wedging in beams to pursue that black seam
Hammer on steel is the soul sound

Some Austrian duke stopped the bullet of lead
Hughes shamed our men off to war 
Tom neatly packed into a brown haversack
Silently strode through the door

The pit heads cast wheels they turned through the days 
The pit ponies a year older grew
Till a note came one day to officially say
I’d lost the best man that I knew

My grief for so long was as black as the mine
My children a fatherless brood
My man at times seems, crowds into my dreams 
But I still need that cold cash for food

Lightly by night the gentle wind blows
Below there they still blast the seams
By the pores of his skin you’ll know a Moreton coal man,
Know his widow by the lack of her means

Blood Red Rose

Her night companion was James Joyces’ prose 
She’s like the morning dew left to melt on a blood red rose
And her reading light it would burn ’til the night grew old
She’d demand a man for a one night stand 
She always gave her soul
And it took it’s toll

CHORUS
Though his memory now is just a faded glow
Time and again her pages show
That the stories there though the books been closed
And as the summer comes, the summer goes,
Like a blood red rose

He’s six foot brown eyed single young and tanned
Pictured in her head is this animated man
In reality her private thoughts git banned
Deep in her contemplation and imagination 
A solemn figure stands
He’s just her dreamtime man

Her youthful grace has mellowed through the years
Growing old is the most depressing thing she fears
To wind up old and lonely with just a cat
In the city’s heart she’d break apart
She never could stand that
Now she can’t go back

Though his memory now is a faded glow 
Time and again her pages show
That the stories there but the books been closed
And as the summer comes the summer goes
Like a blood red rose

River of Tears

There’s a cold rain on the Autumn wind
A brother murdered in Sydney Town
Marrickville brother under supposed legal cover
In his home they gunned him down
We say oh oh oh oh oh ooooooh
Gunned him down
Sad river of tears
Two hundred years in the rive of fear
Gunned him down

They took him out at point blank range
In his home with his small young son
Shot him dead in his Marrickville bed
With a pump action 12 gauge shotgun
Fatherless child and a grieving wife
A black fugitive on the run 
On the run from two centuries
Of oppressions loaded gun
We say oh oh oh oh oh oooooh
Gunned him down
Sad river of tears
Two hundred years in the river of fear
Gunned him down

Terrorists dressed in uniform
Under the protection of their law
Terrorise blacks in dawns of fear 
They come smashin’ through your door
You’re not safe out there on freedom street 
You’re not safe inside the "can"
For their shotguns and their stunt gas
They’re licenced to drop you where you stand
We say oh oh oh oh oooooh
Gunned him down

Droving Woman

She buried him down on the edge of town
Where the brigalow suckers on the cemetery creep
She stood with them children in a heavy brown gown
What you want you just can’t always keep

"I’m sorry", I says, "I knew him so well"
Though your body is young you just never can tell
When the hand of fate rings the final death knell" 
She just turned with the saddest of smiles

She says "At the start well we knewed it so hard
We were always dealt the severest of cards
Honeymoon spent droving Jamieson’s stock
Through the wildest winter you seen

Romantic notions of horses and land 
They were soon dispelled as a fantasised dream
Watching cattle at night in the mid-winter cold 
Turns a person, both wiry and old

The flame of the breakfast fire’d be dead
As the sun rose up he’d be miles up ahead
I’d be breaking the camp there and rolling the beds
While he fanned the stock wider for feed

When the weather turned sour with the onset of rain
An’ the truck’d bog down to the axle mains
He’d move ahead with pack saddles and chains
And I’d wait in the mud by the road

With the blankets and canvas there hung out to dry
With nothing for heat ’cause you couldn’t light a fire
With no stock permit for the forthcoming shire
The dog’d whimper in the winter wind rain

Cattle don’t camp where they’re sloshing in rain
They keep walking all night like a dog on a chain
He’d be red eyed and weary with a pack horse gone lame
I’d sit miles behind in the mud

It was down through Charleville up to Julia Creek
Living on syrup and damper and salted corn meat
We had nothing but the ‘roos and the mailman to meet
We’d move up and down with the rains

But them inland skies have the starriest of nights
With the dance of the fire throwing flickering lights 
The beauty of it’s sunsets were a constant delight
I felt that nature had let me intrude

The enormous vastness of them inland plains
Gives you a lonely contentment to which you can’t put a name
It’s satisfied glow city folks seldom attain
They spend life on a right rigid rail

The kids got their schooling from the government mail
We posted their work in at each cattle sale
They considered the learning a self imposed jail
They’d rather help their father and fail

Early last month at the end of the dry
He was given a horse nobody could ride
Alert were his ears with a fire in his stride
He was young and his spirit was wild

To catch him each morning was an hour long battle
We had to collar rope his near side to throw on the saddle
He’d bite and he’d strike, he made my nerves rattle
Pandemonium reigned with each ride

It was a hot summers’ mornin’ at the government bore
There was stillness around that I’d never felt before
How could he know it was fate at his door
That was stealthily watchin’ his moves

He mounted up quick taking slack from the reins
Grasped a full hand of hair from the horses long mane
He’d just hit the saddle when the horse went insane
Churning dust in a frenzy of fear

The girth on the saddle let go at the ring
The surcingle slipped it was impossible to cling
The horse felt it go made a desperate fling
He was thrown to the length of the reins

I heard his spine snap like a ‘roo shooters’ shot
He’d busted his back on the concreted trough
Sickness and fear were the feelings I got
For the doctor was a six hour drive

I looked at his face and his colour turned white
He turned slowly and said "I can’t make it till night
My body is broken, I’m bleedin’ inside"
And the life slowly drained from his eyes

I’ll sell up the plant and I’ll move here to town
Before the winter returns with a chill on the ground
For what I’ve just lost can seldom be found
I was blessed with the gentlest of men

Eventually the children will move to the east
But I couldn’t stand the bustle of even a quiet city street
I’ll stay in the scrub here where my heart really beats
For some dogs grow too old for change.