Wipe away your tears, then deal with the closing line.
Song Four, Psalm 137 By the Rivers of Babylon Wipe away your tears You survived Rejoice You can still taste salt In your tea You’re not captive Yet you cry Poor fools Today the rivers swell And wipe away whole villages You remember Lhasa And weep again Death has that effect You saved your mother But other mothers left behind Died A few now trickle across Mount Meru Camps built for thousands Receive one or two No more god-throne Hoping that freedom Might birth democracy Instead a new president Gets drunk And rips up the work of Generations Still we chant Tibet In hushed tones It has come to symbolize Enlightenment of a Buddha We use his name To call ourselves home We no longer rejoice When little ones are dashed Against the stones of Babylon If only for that It is enough King James version By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive requ