“They fill us full of lies, everyone buys
‘Bout what it means to be a soldier
I still don’t know how I’m supposed to feel
‘Bout all the blood that’s been spilled
Get me back home
On the day after tomorrow
You can’t deny, the other side
Don’t want to die anymore then we do
What I’m trying to say is don’t they pray
To the same god that we do?”
— Tom Waits
“No one will ever know
that we lived,
that we touched the streets with our feet
that we danced joyfully,
No one will ever know
that we gazed at the sea
from the train windows,
that we breathed
the air that settles
on the café chairs,
No one will ever know
that we stood
on the terrace of life
–Nino Pedretti, “Nobody Will Know”
Not mine. But I really liked it – hence the re-post. Thanks to Tom Lynch
for making me aware of it.
Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.
~Lawrence Ferlinghetti