Duncan Brady [English translation]

Police Officer Duncan Brady couldn't remember

if he joined the Police Corps in 1970 or 1972.

It felt as if the years had begun to flow together.

and it was long ago he thought he had done something sensible.

He sat in his patrol car and muttered to himself:

“I should have quit long ago.”

Twenty five years in Manhattan, first on foot and then by car,

it was like an endless wandering in a barrel full of shit.

He no longer felt any happiness in his job,

for though the police tried, crime increased.

He stayed in his patrol car and thought to himself:

"We (the police) have lost a long time ago."

Policeman Duncan Brady took a coffee at the cafe

where he took his break every night in duty for approximately half his life

He sailed past the black woman behind the counter, where she stood

and washed the glasses and cups the way she had always done.

He thought: "She has never had a free night;

She should have quit long ago.”

He looked out at the street, and those bums who lived there.

This is where they came to subdue their desire.

There stood drug pushers and pimps and whores everywhere,

and in the gutters lay drunkards and ragamuffins who starved.

He thought: "42nd Street is a fucking swamp.

They should have blown it up a long time ago.”

Duncan Brady had a wife and a 19 year old son.

His wife had a lover who she met with now and then.

But Brady didn’t care, he was fed up with her

For she nagged him from the moment when she woke in the morning.

He shook his head and whispered to himself:

"I should have left her long ago."

Brady's only son was like a stranger in his life.

That's the way it is when one has no time to give his youngster.

If one goes to his job while the other goes to bed

one can only see in hindsight how time passes by.

He buttoned his uniform jacket and sighed to himself:

"He slipped away from me long ago."

Duncan Brady stood up carefully because of his painful back,

and popped in quickly into the restroom to ease the pressure.

But just as he was finished, he heard a scream

from the bar, and a sound like porcelain breaking.

He took his gun and hissed to himself:

“Something should have happened here long ago.”

In the bar stood 2 young men with masks and coarse shoes,

On the floor the black woman crept around in a puddle of her blood.

The taller of the robbers saw Brady first.

So he raised his gun and then aimed at the policeman's chest.

But Brady shot direct and then he shot again;

He had learned how long ago.

When the ambulance came to the cafe, everything was too late;

Two white men and a black woman were no longer alive.

And soon the bar was filled with journalists and police.

But Brady didn't want to say anything about the tragedy.

He sat in his police car and muttered to himself;

"I should have quit long ago."

For what no one knew was that Brady's own son

was one of those hidden behind the robbers mask.

He saw it when they took off the hoods,

and the commanding officer asked Brady if he knew the murdered ones.

He nodded sadly toward one of the young men:

"He was one I knew a long time ago."

• Artist:Björn Afzelius
• Album:Elsinore (1999)