Protest poems - 2

Including some lyrics and links

The Times They Are A-Changin'http://www.bobdylan.com/#/songs/times-they-are-changin

Come gather 'round peopleWherever you roamAnd admit that the watersAround you have grownAnd accept it that soonYou'll be drenched to the bone.If your time to youIs worth savin'Then you better start swimmin'Or you'll sink like a stoneFor the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and criticsWho prophesize with your penAnd keep your eyes wideThe chance won't come againAnd don't speak too soonFor the wheel's still in spinAnd there's no tellin' whoThat it's namin'.For the loser nowWill be later to winFor the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmenPlease heed the callDon't stand in the doorwayDon't block up the hallFor he that gets hurtWill be he who has stalledThere's a battle outsideAnd it is ragin'.It'll soon shake your windowsAnd rattle your wallsFor the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathersThroughout the landAnd don't criticizeWhat you can't understandYour sons and your daughtersAre beyond your commandYour old road isRapidly agin'.Please get out of the new oneIf you can't lend your handFor the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawnThe curse it is castThe slow one nowWill later be fastAs the present nowWill later be pastThe order isRapidly fadin'.And the first one nowWill later be lastFor the times they are a-changin'.

• Copyright ©1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

“A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall” – Bob Dylanhttp://www.bobdylan.com/#/songs/hard-rains-gonna-fall

http://www.sonymusicdigital.com/bobdylan/items/album/featured

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways,I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around itI saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin',I saw a white ladder all covered with water,I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?And what did you hear, my darling young one?I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin',Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin',Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin',Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin',Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,

Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?Who did you meet, my darling young one?I met a young child beside a dead pony,I met a white man who walked a black dog,I met a young woman whose body was burning,I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow,I met one man who was wounded in love,I met another man who was wounded with hatred,And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,Where black is the color, where none is the number,And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',But I'll know my song well before I start singin',And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Copyright ©1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

Ohio – Neil Younghttp://www.lyricstime.com/neil-young-ohio-lyrics.html

• Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,We're finally on our own.This summer I hear the drumming,Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to itSoldiers are cutting us downShould have been done long ago.What if you knew herAnd found her dead on the groundHow can you run when you know?

Gotta get down to itSoldiers are cutting us downShould have been done long ago.What if you knew herAnd found her dead on the groundHow can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,We're finally on our own.This summer I hear the drumming,Four dead in Ohio.

Links - 1

Words Without Borders – Online Magazine for International Literaturehttp://www.wordswithoutborders.org/

Macedonian Poetryhttp://www.mymacedonia.net/language/antology1.htm

Poets Against the War http://www.poetsagainstthewar.org/worldpoets.asp

Diane DiPrima – Revolutionary Lettershttp://www.google.com/books?id=FDzmVXE1GYwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=revolutionary+letters&ei=OYhNSrsFmILIBJz4wekC

W.S. Merwin on Political Poetryhttp://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/merwin/political.htm

Links - 2

Poets’ Corner: Protest http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/SubjIdx/protest.html

Poets’ Corner: Weatherhttp://www.theotherpages.org/poems/SubjIdx/weather.html#table

Mario Petrucci - The Green Poetry Packhttp://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/lib/tmp/cmsfiles/File/GreenPack-Petrucci-PDF.pdf

World Wide Watch 09 [resource on climate change]WWWatch 09.pdf (568.628 Kb) Whole book in pdf http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5984Glossary & Ref. Guide http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/CCRG.pdf Key facts: http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5988

Imagine – John Lennonhttp://www.sing365.com/music/Lyric.nsf/Imagine-lyrics-John-Lennon/49604BC1C4A024AE48256BCA000779DD

Imagine there's no heavenIt's easy if you tryNo hell below usAbove us only skyImagine all the peopleLiving for today...

Imagine there's no countriesIt isn't hard to doNothing to kill or die forAnd no religion tooImagine all the peopleLiving life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamerBut I'm not the only oneI hope someday you'll join usAnd the world will be as one

Imagine no possessionsI wonder if you canNo need for greed or hungerA brotherhood of manImagine all the peopleSharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamerBut I'm not the only oneI hope someday you'll join usAnd the world will live as one

“Tyrant”-- Chenjerai Hove

http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/?author=ChenjeraiHove

Why cryfor the wingless spirit bird?Why cryfor the honeybird?

The king attends a funeraland dances with his eyebrows,his naked words smelling of sandand gunpowder.

The polluted windonly smells of lost dreams,some kinds of amorphous declarationsabout blood mixed with dance songs.

Our royal kingsmokes a tired cigaretteand eats biscuits with a fork.

He lives in volcanic tempers,sniffing the wind for armed insurgencyin all locked places.

The king,he wears necklaces of bulletshis lips stiff with pronouncements.

Tomorrow's funeralis banned,the corpsedetainedfor furtherquestioning.

Imagine the Angels of Bread -- Martin Espada

from Imagine the Angels of Bread

http://www.martinespada.net/imagine.htm

This is the year that squatters evict landlords, gazing like admirals from the rail of the roofdeck or levitating hands in praise of steam in the shower; this is the year that shawled refugees deport judges who stare at the floor and their swollen feet as files are stamped with their destination; this is the year that police revolvers, stove-hot, blister the fingers of raging cops, and nightsticks splinter in their palms; this is the year that darkskinned men lynched a century ago return to sip coffee quietly with the apologizing descendants of their executioners. This is the year that those who swim the border's undertow and shiver in boxcars are greeted with trumpets and drums at the first railroad crossing on the other side; this is the year that the hands pulling tomatoes from the vine uproot the deed to the earth that sprouts the vine, the hands canning tomatoes are named in the will that owns the bedlam of the cannery;

this is the year that the eyes stinging from the poison that purifies toilets awaken at last to the sight of a rooster-loud hillside, pilgrimage of immigrant birth; this is the year that cockroaches become extinct, that no doctor finds a roach embedded in the ear of an infant; this is the year that the food stamps of adolescent mothers are auctioned like gold doubloons, and no coin is given to buy machetes for the next bouquet of severed heads in coffee plantation country. If the abolition of slave-manacles began as a vision of hands without manacles, then this is the year; if the shutdown of extermination camps began as imagination of a land without barbed wire or the crematorium, then this is the year; if every rebellion begins with the idea that conquerors on horseback are not many-legged gods, that they too drown if plunged in the river, then this is the year. So may every humiliated mouth, teeth like desecrated headstones, fill with the angels of bread.

Give Peace a Chance -- Written by: John Lennon/Paul McCartney Additional lyrics: Sean Ono Lennon

http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Give-Peace-A-Chance-lyrics-Lenny-Kravitz/A57E6447CE92857A482568C800331EA1

Everybody's talkin 'bout,Planet earthRebirthUnited nationsGood relationsSpace stationsStarvationRadiationSalvatioinEducationLiberation

Chorus:All we are saying is: "Give Peace A Chance !"

Everybody's talkin' 'boutCivil warRevolutionArmageddonNo solutionAre we facingVietnamWe don't want to Drop the bomb

Chorus

Everybody's talkin 'boutAcid houseGay spouseGreen houseHeavy metalHip hop CensorshipHas to stopHivAztNew kids dance onMTVWith toxic waste dumps in the sea

Chorus

Everybody's talkin 'bout (Cyndi's part)Amazon's (Cyndi's part)Trees gone (Cyndi's part)Cancer cellsFrom the sunMiddle east Crazy beastRock n rollersSing for peace

Chorus ...

Atlantis—A Lost Sonnetby Eavan Boland

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/atlantis-a-lost-sonnet/+ hear the poem: http://poemsoutloud.net/audio/archive/eavan_boland_reads_atlantis/

•How on earth did it happen, I used to wonderthat a whole city—arches, pillars, colonnades, not to mention vehicles and animals—had all one fine day gone under?

I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.Surely a great city must have been missed?I miss our old city —

white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe what really happened is

this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a wordto convey that what is gone is gone forever and never found it. And so, in the best traditions of

where we come from, they gave their sorrow a nameand drowned it.

•

Tres Arboles - Three Trees – Gabriela Mistralhttp://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/guides/1979/5/79.05.06.x.html

Tres Arboles

Tres árbo1es caidos quedaron en la orilla del sendero. El lenador los o1vidó, y conversan, apretados de amor, como tres ciegos. El sol de ocaso pone Su sangre viva en los hendidos lenos ¡Y se llevan los vientos la fragancia de su costado abierto! Uno, torcido, tiende Su brazo immenso y de follaje trémulo Lacia otro, y sus heridas Como dos ojos son, llenos de reugo. El lenador los o1vidó. La noche vendrá. Estaré con ellos. Recibiré en mi corazón sus mansas Resinas. Me serán como de fuego. Y mudos y cenidos Nos halle el dia en un montón de duelo.

Three Trees

Three trees, struck down, were left by the edge of the road. The woodsman forgot them, so, they spoke, clutching one and other out of love, like three blind men. The dying sun spills its fiery blood on the wounded logs, While the fragrance of their open sides is lifted away by the winds! One, twisted, extends its mightly arm with trembling leaves toward another, and its wounds beg like two pleading eyes. They woodsman forgot them. Night is coming. I will be one with them. Their mild resins will flow into my heart. To me they’ll burn like fire. And—day will find us, silent and clinging together, in a heap of sorrow.

Translated by Jill Savitt In John A. Crow, John T. Reed, John E. Englekirk, Irving A. Leonard, An

Anthology of Spanish-American Literature. New York: Meridith Corp., 1968.

For the Lost Generation, Galway Kinnellhttp://poetry365.tumblr.com/post/68625161/for-the-lost-generation-galway-kinnell

Oddities composed the sum of the newsE=mc2Was another weirdSign of the existence of the Jews.

And Paris! All afternoon in someone’s atticWe lifted our glassesAnd drank to the assesWho ran the world and turned neurotic.

Ours was a wonderful part,Everyone threw rice,The fattest girls were nice,The world was rich in wisecracks and confetti.

The war was a first wide, somebody’s blunder.Who was right, who lose,Held nobody’s interest,The dog on top was as bad as the dog under.

Sometimes after whiskey, at the break of day,There was a traceOf puzzlement on a face,Face of blue nights that kept bleaching away.

Look back on it all—the faraway cost,Crash and sweet blue(Oh Hiroshima, Oh Jews)—No generation was so gay as the lost.

Photo by Sarah Barrett, http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/212

METRUM V. Henry Vaughn (1621-95)

http://www.archive.org/stream/worksofhenryvaug01vauguoft/worksofhenryvaug01vauguoft_djvu.txt

Happy that first white age ! when we

Lived by the Earth's mere charity.

No soft luxurious diet then

Had effeminated men,

No other meat, nor wine had any

Than the coarse mast, or simple honey,

And by the parents' care laid up

Cheap berries did the children sup.

No pompous wear was in those days

Of gummy silks, or scarlet baize,

Their beds were on some flow'ry brink,

And clear spring-water was their drink.

The shady pine in the sun's heat

Was their cool and known retreat,

For then 'twas not cut down, but stood

The youth and glory of the wood.

The daring sailor with his slaves Then had not cut the swelling waves, Nor for desire of foreign store Seen any but his native shore. No stirring drum had scarr'd that age, Nor the shrill trumpet's active rage. No wounds by bitter hatred made With warm blood soil'd the shining blade ; For how could hostile madness arm An age of love, to public harm ? When common justice none withstood, Nor sought rewards for spilling blood. O that at length our age would raise Into the temper of those days ! But — worse than Etna's fires ! — debate And avarice inflame our State. Alas ! who was it that first found Gold, hid of purpose under ground. That sought our pearls, and div'd to find Such precious perils for mankind!•