After these processions comes the sweeping up   The rag and bone possessions, an old tin cup   The army trucks have hauled away the newly slain   The angry crowd retreats, but they’ll be back again      And the prisoner in the palace does not understand   The ingratitude around him after all he’s done and planned   But if this the way that it must be then he’ll be damned   If he will let them take away his perfect dream      Ministers stuff bank notes into leather bags   Their wives have packed the jewelry and the luggage tanks   The word is on the street now, growing day by day   And even the informers know the stay away      And the prisoner in the palace is appalled by this charade   Feeling strangely unprotected by his miles of golden braid   And if this is the way that it must be then I’m afraid   He will not let them take away his perfect dream      And these mountains of equipment brought from foreign lands   Are now stacked up in the desert being buried by the sand   These rows of helicopters rusting where they stand   Are butterflies to take away the perfect dream      He cried inside the limousine and at the airport too   Where the soldier knelt before him and kissed his shoe   He flew across the desert and the open sea   While they tore down all his statues and his legacy      And the victor greets the newsmen with a strange and stoic style   They take a hundred thousand pictures and in none of them a smile   But this is just the way that it must be now for a while   He’s only come to bring another perfect dream