Thread: a thoughtful poem

by Jackson Brown. It has moved me.


"I've been waiting for something to happen
For a week or a month or a year
With the blood in the ink of the headlines
And the sound of the crowd in my ear

You might ask what it takes to remember
When you know that you've seen it before
Where a government lies to a people
And a country is drifting to war

And there's a shadow on the faces
Of the men who send the guns
To the wars that are fought in places
Where their business interest runs

On the radio talk shows and the T.V.
You hear one thing again and again
How the U.S.A. stands for freedom
And we come to the aid of a friend

But who are the ones that we call our friends--
These governments killing their own?
Or the people who finally can't take any more
And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone

There are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire
There's a shadow on the faces
Of the men who fan the flames
Of the wars that are fought in places
Where we can't even say the names

They sell us the President the same way
They sell us our clothes and our cars
They sell us every thing from youth to religion
The same time they sell us our wars

I want to know who the men in the shadows are
I want to hear somebody asking them why
They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are
But they're never the ones to fight or to die

And there are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire"

(Lives in the balance - Jackson Brown)

Very thoughtful and appropiate for the epoch we're living in, thanks for posting here - much appreciated!

I agree with Ringo--it's very important and timely. Even here in the belly of the beast, one feels powerless to halt the march of folly. It's said that evil prevails when good people do nothing, but it is very hard to know what one can do.
Here is a poem I have always liked, by the British poet Wilfred Owen, who was killed in battle one week before the armistice. The title and last line are from Horace, and translate as "It is sweet and proper to die for one's country", a popular bit of rhetoric at the time.

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And toward our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick boys!-An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

(Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918)

O! Wanderers in the Shadowed Land

So silent was it that the fall of their ponie's hoofs, rustling on dead leaves and occasionally stumbling on hidden roots, seemed to thud in their ears. Frodo tried to sing a song to encourage them, but his voice sank to a murmur.

O! Wanderer in the shadowed land
Despair not! For though dark they stand
All woods there be must end at last,
And see the open sun go past:
The setting sun, the rising sun,
The day's end, or the day begun,
For east or west all woods must fail….

Fail - even as he said the word his voice faded into silence. The air seemed heavy and the making of words wearisome. Just behind them a large branch fell from an old overhanging tree with a crash into the path. The trees seemed to close in before them.

From: The Lord of the Rings, Book One, Chapter Six

The following, by John Robbins, has been making the rounds:

"If You Want to Be a Hero and Your IQ's Nearly Zero

Do you know the old song "If You're Happy And You Know It Clap Your Hands"? Someone (I don't know who) started the idea of putting new political charged words to the tune. I've rewritten it to go as follows. Feel free to pass it along if you wish. Even though the subject is grave, I hope it makes you laugh.
— John Robbins

If you cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq.
If the markets are a drama, bomb Iraq.
If the terrorists are Saudi,
And your alibi is shoddy,
And your tastes remain quite gaudy,
Bomb Iraq.

If you never were elected, bomb Iraq.
If your mood is quite dejected, bomb Iraq.
If you think that SUVs,
Are the best thing since sliced cheese,
And your father you must please,
Bomb Iraq.

If the globe is quickly warming, bomb Iraq.
If the poor will soon be storming, bomb Iraq.
We assert that might makes right,
Burning oil is a delight,
For the empire we will fight,
Bomb Iraq.

If we have no allies with us, bomb Iraq.
If we think that someone's dissed us, bomb Iraq.
So to hell with the inspections,
Let's look tough for the elections,
Close your mind and take directions,
Bomb Iraq.

If corporate fraud is growin', bomb Iraq.
If your ties to it are showin', bomb Iraq.
If your politics are sleazy,
And hiding that ain’t easy,
And your manhood’s getting queasy,
Bomb Iraq.

Fall in line and follow orders, bomb Iraq.
For our might now knows no borders, bomb Iraq.
Disagree? We’ll call it treason,
It's the make war not love season,
Even if we have no reason,
Bomb Iraq."

In case you haven't heard, Aristophanes' classic anti-war comedy Lysistrata will be presented throughout the world on Monday, March 3, in local readings. There will even be readings in Ubud and Kuala Lumpur---check out locations at the web site below:

http://www.pecosdesign.com/lys/

behemoth

but for lyrics and prose my english is, very unfortunate, not good enough :cry:

There is always Fritz Kortner's "Die Sendung der Lysistrata"! Maybe you can get the video.

By the way, in yesterday's Guardian (i.e., March 1), there were some excerpts from a new anthology of contemporary Iraqi poets:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/stor ... 90,00.html

There is also a review of the anthology in the same section.

moth

my German is even worse :)

Hi Behemoth, Thanks for the quick word on the Lysistrata Project website. As it lists international locales for this event, I was able to send a heads up to farflung friends in places like Barcelona, Spain.... Nothing but blue sky and sunshine today in California. (I can't resist continuing my weather motif) I wish I could say the same about the world situation.....L