Rose Street Music: Irina Rivkin music

• MP3 play whole song, hi-fi (broadband)
• MP3 play whole song, lo-fi (modem)

I wrote this after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
rough (not polished/professional/edited) recording, similar to a live performance (in which harmonies would be performed live using a loop station instrument)

(acapella) She stands on the rooftop, she screams to the sky,
She calls out in vain as a copter flies by
Her kids tug her sleeve, cry for water to drink,
Surrounded by river, they try not to sink

(piano) Who gets to leave ahead of the storm
The highways are one-way, the ocean’s too warm
Evacuate all, but folks without cars
Without money to flee, are left behind

Chorus: When the ice caps melt down, the water returns
Not a drop you can drink, but fierce flooding burns
Through our homes & our lives & the land & the sky
We are blind to the storm’s very eye

Our high water trucks have gone to iraq
Our national guard between desert attacks
Hear news that their families back home
fight rising waters, alone

She stands on the rooftop, she screams to the sky
She calls out in vain as a copter flies by
Her kids tug her sleeve, cry for water to drink
Surrounded by river, they try not to sink

but who hears the voices from thousands of rooftops,
and crumbling cages of water-logged stone
days turn to weeks, joined together they wait
but for many, the help comes too late

Chorus: When the ice caps melt down, the water returns
Not a drop you can drink, but fierce flooding burns
Through our homes & our lives & the land & the sky
We are blind to the storm’s very eye

the Mississippi river swells with tears from the sky
burst through levees & drowns us in our poison
does she not care that most of those left behind
don’t drive cars, don’t own tailpipes, refineries & smokestacks?

if the rain knew about Kyoto, if the ocean knew about Iraq,
if Katrina knew what had caused this, would she take it all back?
would she flood a certain ranch in Texas or the white house instead?
Then how fast would relief move ahead?

Chorus: When the ice caps melt down, the water returns
Not a drop you can drink, but fierce flooding burns
Through our homes & our lives & the land & the sky
We are blind to the storm’s very eye….where’s the truth in the storm’s very eye