Esther

You and I in a little toy shop
Where some mourn for the king of pop
While others take the money they’ve got
And set free the balloons they’ve bought
If you have time, I’ll sing a song
Of how it happens, what goes wrong
When, floating in the summer sky
99 green balloons go by.

99 green balloons
Floating in the summer sky
Some sort of gharbzadegi?
Alarmed, the theocracy
Sets forth to investigate
As the cries of “God is great”
Rise up in the summer sky
Where 99 green balloons go by.

99 Basijis
So-called revolutionaries
Try to put out all the sparks
Before another fire starts
The neighbors watch in disbelief
Bombs and guns beneath the leaves
Shooting in the summer sky
As 99 green balloons go by.

99 ayatollahs confer
Council of Guardians – or war?
Batons and tear gas canisters
Seem to be their only answers
They cry “Death!” but they want power
Who’d have thought, what a dark hour
More than the president’s on the line
As 99 green balloons go by.

99 years of fighting
Fallen hopes and broken dreams
Everyone loses, no one wins
The world around us lies in ruins
Perhaps it isn’t too late yet
Look, today, lest we forget
I have found a green balloon
I think of you and let it go.