Unsettled Scores

There's a prayer for the living and the dying
There's a prayer to soothe the savage sea
There's a prayer it seems for almost everything
But you haven't got a prayer for me
And I, I haven't got a prayer.

So many cries in the night that you try to ignore
Why didn't I do that? why didn't I do this?
So many unbroken chains, so many unsettled scores
The old man at the bank that sneers
The teachers and their slaps
The brutal eyes, the uniforms
The lawyers and their traps
The lonely girls who yearn to love
And learn to kiss and dance
The rich and selfish widows
In the market for romance.

The soldiers with the smell of war
That never fades away
The heroes on the playing fields
Forgotten in a day.

The priest in the confessional
The trembling hands and whispered sighs
The doctors in the hospital
Unending tests and twisted lies
The betrayers, the betrayed
The abandoned, the afraid
The corrupted and the celebrated
Endlessly humiliated
Gloriously big parade.

You can say a prayer for everyone
That there could ever be
Say a prayer for all of these and more
But there's still no prayer for me
Say a prayer for your purest daughter
Toll a bell for your only son
There's no way out and all my prayers
Are fading one by one
The stern and disapproving lips
The friends who just attack
The fathers that they take away
The ones that can't get back
The desperate boy who sleeps alone
Whoever's in his bed
The chosen ones they get a home.

The blessed get ahead
The kids out playing softball
In the fading summer night
The teenage lovers at the drive-in
The glow of the dashboard light
An American flyer on a steep incline
The wind blowing through your hair
The trophies and the holidays, they vanished in the air
The betrayers the betrayed, the abandoned the afraid
The glorified the idolised, the bastards and their jealous eyes
An amazingly big parade.

You can say a prayer for anyone
You've known or you might see
Say a prayer for all of these and more
But there's still no prayer for me
Say a prayer for every living thing
The unborn and deceased
But I haven't got a prayer I know
That's the nature of the beast
That's the nature of the beast.