LET THE PEOPLE LIVE!
Every year the world dies and comes alive again.
It makes a new year.
It renews itself over and over, again and again.
And in that circle around and around we all go and where we stop
we all know. Bending as all breaths bend toward the dead,
our flesh toward soil.
Tomorrow we are bones and ash, the roots of weeds poking
through our skulls. But Today is our life! Today we want to live!
Today we want to go for a walk under the cold sun. We want to go
skiing and snow shoeing, slidin' and tubin', and snowmachinin'.
We want to go ice fishing. We want to stand out here in the snow
and freeze our butts off so we can tell George Bush where to go.
It's not time for war. It's not time for war and killing.
It's time to come inside at the end of the day, take off
your snowy clothes and stand beside the woodstove
and drink tea and port, eat hot stew and warm bread.
It's not time for war and killing.
It's time to sit in the evening in the warm house and look at
seed catalogues and dream about spring, time to draw maps
of where the new apple trees and day lilies will go and think about
how many more blueberry plants you think you'll buy.
It's not time for war and killing.
It's time for life, it's time to make love, time to visit with friends.
It's time to play music and sing, sit down and eat, rise up and dance.
It's time for music and dancing.
It's not time for war and killing.
Presidents and Prime Ministers, Despots and Dictators,
Tyrants and Terrorists, We don't want to fight your wars.
We want to eat and love and dance.
We want to lie down and die in our own good time.
Let us die our own natural deaths, old and wizened,
crippled and suffering, but let us die our natural deaths.
Don't let us die from your bullets and bombs. Don't let us die
from your fire and poison gas. Let us die in the peace
of our own old age. Let us all grow old and die in peace.
Let us die in peace.
— David Budbill
TALK/POEM DELIVERED AT THE PEACE RALLY/WAR PROTEST IN MONTPELIER, VT, 18 JANUARY 2003
People who believe in absurdities
will eventually commit atrocities.
~ Voltaire
Uni-verse
