Anno domini numbers years
since Jesus Christ appeared,
with the gift of hope for us of good will.
Good will frees us from the fear,
that unless their dead outnumber our’s,
forever, we’re their slaves.
No gun shoots as far as good ideas go –
they go through walls, and leave them whole.
Wherever bullets go, holes appear.
Whoever speaks with bullets,
knows only holes
and flows of blood –
O dear, from young and old,
from good and bad,
flows blood from war, a wasting flood.
Another Dylan song would be timely,
if this time, instead of telling us
the answers all are blowing in the wind,
Bob says which wind, the one that carries
warmth from west, rain from east, snow from north,
or fear, as once grew on plantations, in our south.
Dave Read