Maybe the poet is gay
But he’ll be heard anyway

Maybe the poet is drugged
But he won’t stay under the rug

Maybe the voice of the spirit
In which case you’d better hear it

Maybe he’s a woman
Who can touch you where you’re human

Male female slave or free
Peaceful or disorderly
Maybe you and he will not agree
But you need him to show you new ways to see

Don’t let the system fool you
All it wants to do is rule you
Pay attention to the poet
You need him and you know it

Put him up against the wall
Shoot him up with pentothal

Shoot him up with lead
You won’t call back what’s been said

Put him in the ground
But one day you’ll look around

There’ll be a face you don’t know
Voicing thoughts you’ve heard before

Male female slave or free
Peaceful or disorderly
Maybe you and he will not agree
But you need him to show you new ways to see

Don’t let the system fool you
All it wants to do is rule you
Pay attention to the poet
You need him and you know it

1990 – “Fergus and I were fooling around with that song before the tour started. Of course we had to work out how we were going to do these songs in a trio format, what, what we could do with the Stick and the guitar to make it work, and Maybe the Poet was a song that I wanted to do but the original version of it didn’t work and so what were we going to do with it and we were sitting around trying this and trying that and I forget which one of us came up with the idea of trying a certain ska version of it but, um, actually I think it was both of us because Fergus started playing a rhythm on the Stick and then that suggested the ska rhythm on the guitar and I tried singing the song over top of that and it worked, so all of a sudden we had a whole new version of that song.”
– from “Interview and Segments” a 1990 True North/Epic CD.