They cut down the trees,
one hot summer’s day,
to save us from squirrels
or maybe the snow,
or was it to widen
those old fashioned paths,
for questions drew silence,
and they never were clear,
they marked them with red,
with their crosses of blood,
then cut down the beauty,
and destroyed all the shade,
and left us a wasteland
they thought rather grand.
Where is the silence, that sweet serenade,
to bring me some peace, with a soft calming air,
to heal me, to soothe me; a sun-dappled glade,
where gentleness sits in an old rocking chair,
for long is the journey, the path hard to find,
shaded by shadows, illusions of light,
this stumbling forward, this walk of the blind,
endlessly seeking a way towards sight,
in lands full of troubles that fall like the rain,
and flow by black streams to plutonium seas,
while we struggle, alone, with Time’s heavy chain,
each of us damned by the loss of the keys,
but I’m tired of asking, the asking a plea,
for silence, for peace, some rest for my head,
so to hell with it all, I’m up for some tea,
or whisky, or stronger, to ward off the dead.
To see Jupiter rising in a May evening sky,
an arcing bright light among shivering leaves
and early white blossoms of an old cherry tree,
caused me to think of my brief passage through time
as the rise and the fall of a lone shooting star,
a wanderer, from nowhere, whose gone in a flash,
while the planet, unchanged, moves still on its path,
and the leaves, from bright green, turn to autumnal gold,
then fall, and decay, yet with spring are reborn,
while the blaze that was me is now just smoke and dark dust.
I’m now just an exile from a disappeared land,
whose path has been set by an unseen hand,
unloved, and unsung, and unknown to these
who walk through their lives on bloody bent knees,
shameful and broken, or hang from tall trees,
where love is for sale and hatred is free,
served with the news over coffee or tea,
where all are mad once for madness is all
when few mourn lost Virtue or Reason’s long fall,
and the wind in the grass, once a sweet breath,
brings darkness, brings storms, brings trouble and death,
yet Spring makes me sing and play my guitar,
for the notes are my dreams of a happiness far,
to be found on the maps of that ancient lost land,
that lies somewhere, they say, near old Samarkand.
For the living we love,
the dead that we mourn,
a question long-asked,
without answer remains;
why men kill for money,
in crimes they call wars,
arranged over dinner,
and the finest Chablis.
You hear what they say,
‘it’s what has to be’,
‘they’re evil you know’,
‘there’s no other way’,
chanted like prayers
on the video screens,
by those artful with lies,
it’s not what it seems,
who solemnly state,
‘it’s for justice, dear friends’
“for liberty, for freedom,
‘by god, for your life,’
so no answer comes,
so it’s little I know,
but behold, I see Justice
now rides a pale horse
and carries her banner,
bloodied,
upside turned down.
(On Seeing Sitting Bull’s War Shirt at the Royal Ontario Museum)
They were in a glass case, with labels and maps,
his moccassins, his headdress, some old photographs,
but center of all his sacred war shirt
worn into battle that hot day in June,
when the steady wind whispered with American lead,
as he fought for the weak, the mighty brought low
a great peoples leader, the great Sitting Bull,
now a footnote to history, on display in a case,
his shirt now a trophy, for tourists and kids,
and in cold black and white, it seemed from the light,
that his eyes glowed from tears he bled every night,
so far from his people, so far from his land,
a Toronto amusement, a museum his tomb.
I was hired for money,
But gave them my life,
In their factories, their mills,
In the sweat, and the strife,
I gave them my time,
And I gave them my blood
Like honey, my smiles,
Vast riches, a flood,
They bound me in chains
Of bills, loans and debt,
Like the others a slave,
And no escape yet,
Robbed of my mind
Of all my own thoughts,
Pumped in their own
Through lies that they write
For they suck life for gold,
Like vampires of old,
Just so you know
The reasons we fight.
The painter’s-box sky presents its grand show,
free of a charge or a fee,
the rose-yellow light,
the splashes of white,
a brush of the blue in between,
are colours of dawn
emerging from dusk
as night slips slowly away
and comforting thoughts,
in the warmth of a bed,
to the old reality turn;
to lies on their lips,
their gods of the sun,
their crimes,
our blood in the sand,
as down in the street
comes that crowd without end,
rushing to be there on time.
A glass of rum before me now,
as pure as juice of gold,
is all that’s left of younger dreams,
once dreamt in younger days,
of a world by love and labour ruled,
not banks, the cruel, the thieves,
and all their creeping underlings,
who with dismal shadows work,
as pale of skin, as pale as death,
for day they’re shamed to see,
a world where none could ever think to hate,
for then we’d hate ourselves,
by struggle freed from heavy chains
they from our blood long forged,
freed with righteous justice,
by all our righteous might,
all power by us seized, at last,
to end the endless night,
to end the endless sacrifice,
to gods with drunken smiles,
to make a life worth living,
to try to learn the way,
the way with nature, and ourselves,
but now this glass is all there is,
and nightmares fill my sleep,
a chaos swept by darkness,
dark clouds without a sky.
The wild winds weep tears of rage,
and howl in bitter pain,
at the looming fate of human kind,
by hubris now brought low,
ravaged by bold ignorance,
by avarice seduced,
lost in lust for eager death,
the acrid smell of war,
who yet upright, amazed, awakes,
to a body scarred with wounds,
and looks on in stupid wonder,
as from the wounds blood flows;
the skies are black with murdered souls,
the fires fiercely burn,
the seething seas rise up as one,
yet still we blunder on,
as if in childish games we live,
of skip and blind man’s bluff,
as if our life’s an endless maze,
of twist and turnabout,
unsure the way we entered in,
in fear there’s no way out.
One Voyce of the World 