Shah Of Shahs - Al Stewart

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