There Is No Shame

Lyrics

There is no shame
in being defeated
when the odds are stacked unfairly
Only a besieged sorrow
at being severed from millions
who believed false stories
Of benign deliverance
scattered carelessly
by a blustering pretender.

I wish to dodge
this sadness
which makes my hand weaken
as I wring the words out
turning them dry of hope

Could it be that
those I can no longer reach
felt too hurt
to trust in quiet reason
too weary for sharing power?
Did the lies kindle
embers of some old imagined glory?

But bombast
cannot heal us
It comes in a flash car
and slinks back to padded privilege
leaving despair
glutted with a fearful anger

Song Description

A tune put to a poem by the writer Sheila Rowbotham. ‘‘I wrote this after the Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn who I admire was defeated in Britain in December 2019. But Steve Skaith’s musical version has giving it a wider meaning. Songs touch on feelings that words do not necessarily reach – hearing it took what I had scribbled late at night on paper off into another realm of expression.’

This song has not been released.