SPEAK OUT
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

And a vast paranoia sweeps across the land
And America turns the attack on its Twin Towers
Into the beginning of the Third World War
The war with the Third World

And the terrorists in Washington
Are drafting all the young men

And no one speaks

And they are rousting out
All the ones with turbans
And they are flushing out
All the strange immigrants

And they are shipping all the young men
To the killing fields again

And no one speaks

And when they come to round up
All the great writers and poets and painters
The National Endowment of the Arts of Complacency
Will not speak

While all the young men
Will be killing all the young men
In the killing fields again

So now is the time for you to speak
All you lovers of liberty
All you lovers of the pursuit of happiness
All you lovers and sleepers
Deep in your private dreams

Now is the time for you to speak
O silent majority
Before they come for you


...Sam Hamill, co-founder of poetry publisher Copper Canyon Press in Port Townsend, Wash., declined with a flourish an invitation to the 12th February "Poetry and the American Voice" symposium at the white house, and instead urged friends to observe "A National Day of Poetry Against the War" and to contribute anti-war poems to a new Web site, www.poetsagainstthewar.org. Word spread, and more than 5,300 poems were collected, many from the brightest literary talents in America, including Adrienne Rich, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Philip Levine and Diane DiPrima. Hamill said he had expected about 50 responses.

The above poem is the one Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote as his contribution to this cause. Enjoy!!

-

much love, light and laughter,
ananya.




*~ The soul is healed by being with children.~* - Fyodor Dostoevsky

......

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you

Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen

and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to
~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti,The World Is a Beautiful Place; (verses 2,3 and 4)