Cockburn, Bruce - Dust And Diesel Lyrics






Battered buses jammed up to the roof
Dust and diesel the prevailing themes
Farmer sleeping on the truck in front
Feet trailing over like he's trolling for dreams
Smiling girl directing traffic flow
.45 strapped over cotton print dress
Marimba-brown and graceful limbs
Give me a moment of loneliness

Dust and diesel
Rise like incense from the road
Smoke of offering
For the revolution morning

Headlights pick out fallen sack of corn
One lone tarantula standing guard
We pull up and stop and she ambles off
Discretion much the better part of cars
Rodrigo the government driver jumps out
He's got chickens who can use the feed
We sweep the asphalt on our hands and knees
Fill up his trunk with dusty yellow seeds

Dust and diesel
Rise like incense from the road
Smoke of offering
For the revolution morning

Guitars and rifles in blue moonlight
Soldiers stretched out on sparkling grass
Engine broke down, they took us in
Now we make music for the time to pass
Tired men and women raise their voice to the night
Hope the fragile bloom they've grown will last
Pride and passion and love and fear
Burning hearts burning boats of the past

Dust and diesel
Rise like incense from the road
Smoke of offering
For the revolution morning





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Cockburn, Bruce Dust And Diesel Comments
  1. C.... F....

    My saddest day. 10,549 views, and only 96 likes for one of the greatest songs ever written. "Dust and diesel Rise like incense from the road Smoke of offering For the revolution morning." Poetry at its best - anyone that has ever traveled anywhere in the 3rd world, deep in the rural country and oustide of the urban setting immediately gets this reference. Raw. Pure. Exposed and vulnerable. Beautiful humanity. Sure he was disolusioned with communism in his youth, as we all were, until we gained a mortgage and paid a lifetime in taxes and we all became republicans. Meh. A toast to you herr Cockburn. Viva la revolution.

  2. T.... ....

    What a great song. Great words. Great rhythm. I've moved on from my leftist leanings, but I'm still a Bruce fan.

  3. 3.... ....

    Thanks for posting this, love the photos you found.

  4. C.... B....

    featuring the chapman stick

  5. k.... ....

    There's no whore like an old whore, as the saying goes. Suddenly all the useful idiots of the 1980s, singing praises to the Sandinistas, are silent today. As Margaret Randall has testified, Daniel Ortega raped his daughter for over decade, right around the time when Cockburn was writing songs propping up the "revolutionaries." Now Ortega presides over the most efficient cleptocracy in this hemisphere and has wiped his bottom with the national constitution. Nicaragua is no more the best of what we are, even in the flash of a long gone moment.

    Surely Bruce is perhaps the shameless sonofabitch toward whom the rocket launcher should aim today.

    k.... ....

    Bruce wrote a song about quotidian details during what seemed at the time like a positive movement against violence and oppression. Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, illegally sold weapons to Iran to fund the CIA-trained Contra death squads in Nicaragua, who the Sandinistas were fighting against. If, after all that, you think *Bruce* is the bad guy, well... maybe politics ain't your game, man.

    k.... ....

    Or maybe you are just an uneducated idiot who wasn't there after the VietNam war which spilled over into all this time and influenced it. Every revolutionary to you types is a saint....

    k.... ....

    Amen....I still like the music but he has always been a leftist dimwit with his head in the sand.

    k.... ....

    nope. choke and drop.

  6. A.... F....

    beautiful song from one of the great socially conscious song writers, musicians, and music arrangers: Canadian Bruce Cockburn(Coburn)

    af
    male
    american(against US imperialism and wealth disparity)

  7. K.... C....

    What a great song!

  8. S.... ....

    Maybe my favorite Bruce Cockburn song, along with Peggy's Kitchen Wall.

  9. F.... D....

    My favorite of Bruce's song, use to go to sleep listening to it. He makes it seem you are there with him.

  10. d.... ....

    Love this song - Bruce is such a phenomenally talented musician

  11. a.... ....

    So few comments ? Great tune...one of my favorites  from some years ago...

  12. d.... ....

    Thanks for uploading. I have the CD - actually I have every CD / Vinyl available from Bruce, but to be able to watch shared songs/videos online is always a nice experience. So far Dust an Diesel was only available in an incomplete live version with bad sound quality.