Friday, April 3, 2020

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:




No comments:

Post a Comment