I have always liked this lyric. It was written about travelling in Peru. I'm not really sure that it is true of Peru today as, in my experience to date, the vast majority people try to sell you things and don't out and out beg. I guess this was a sign of the times when the author was travelling back in 1988.
Tiahuanaco
I was a tourist in the Andes
On my way to Tiahuanaco
Where the balance of a weeping god
Faced east to the rising sun
But I looked out the window
And all I could see
Was the face of a girl
She was looking at me
She was begging for food
Then I knew I had found
The weeping god
In the face of a child
As she gestures with her fingers
Her little brother followed suit
And all I did was take my camera
So the image never fades away
I no longer saw the great gate of the sun
Nor the dawn of time when our race had begun
Just black eyes like starving dogs looking at me
A weeping god was all I'd ever see
...
I stared at the shacks and the shanty town mess
I couldn't help but to think of the West
The balance was lost and my reason went wild
As the weeping god came alive in the child
--- Jaz Coleman 1988
(From the Killing Joke track Tiahuanaco available on the album "Outside the Gate")
