The ghost of life: The fading order

Right now I’m feeling like I need something to capture my rage at where the world and my country are. The novel coronavirus was not predestined to be cataclysmic; governments all across Earth basically screwed the pooch, and this administration and its Repug enablers basically told everyone else, “Hold my beer,” and had at it.

So my entry for National Poetry Month today is Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-changin’”. Because not only is it scathing, it gives me hope. Ain’t nothing going to be the same on the other side of this pandemic, just as nothing was the same after the bubonic plague of the Fourteenth Century. I have no way of knowing what the differences will be—but I can tell you that the Black Death broke the feudal system in Europe.

Are you listening, Capitalism? How about you, senators and congressmorons?

“The Times They Are A-changin’”

Come gather ’round people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

You’ll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you is worth savin’

Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin’

Come writers and critics

Who prophesize with your pen

And keep your eyes wide

The chance won’t come again

And don’t speak too soon

For the wheel’s still in spin

And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’

For the loser now will be later to win

For the times they are a-changin’

Come senators, congressmen

Please heed the call

Don’t stand in the doorway

Don’t block up the hall

For he that gets hurt

Will be he who has stalled

There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’

It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls

For the times they are a-changin’

Come mothers and fathers

Throughout the land

And don’t criticize

What you can’t understand

Your sons and your daughters

Are beyond your command

Your old road is rapidly agin’

Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand

For the times they are a-changin’

The line it is drawn

The curse it is cast

The slow one now

Will later be fast

As the present now

Will later be past

The order is rapidly fadin’

And the first one now will later be last

For the times they are a-changin’

And since this is, after all, a song, here’s one of my favorite covers, by Tracy Chapman, from Bob Dylan’s Fiftieth Anniversary concert: