Story Behind The Song

These lyrics were written in the style of Bruce Cockburn, & were sprouted out of our sense of outrage over the current war in Iraq, as well as from various books we had been reading about President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty in the '60's. We thought

Song Description

This was supposed to be an attempt to fuse dub reggae with high lonesome instrumentation (mandolin, steel guitar, etc), but it ended up mutating into . . . something else. the lyrics are about weapons inspector Hans Blix, that urbane gentleman Swede who g

Lyrics

Our Light in the winter -----
Pray for us sinners
Now & at the hour of our death.
Our Light in the winter -----
Pray for us sinners
Now & at the hour of our death.

This is my 77th summer, yet so engrossed was I in these memoirs I didn't hear Mårten & Göran serenading me from my study door, a birthday cake in the shape of our Blixmobile (complete with a gold-on-blue racing stripe under the candles) in tow. Eva joked that it was like swivelling Beethoven around at the end of the concert, deaf to his own applause! On days like today I look into my sons' faces & wonder: Did our maneuverings prevent even one MOAB from falling?

President Johnson had called them
Wolves who would tear at the hard-won
Gains with bureaucracy.
"Wolves" is an apt choice of words since
They're still in the woods eating evidence -----
Just ask David Kelly.

Take note:
These same mechanizations
That filibustered vigilant to stop Civil Rights legislation
& successfully kept the wealth of nations
From sharing power with those
That they thought were well below their station,
The same party that invented this war,
It's the same bullies & bores
Who were against trying to fluoridate
The water we pour. Irate,
They said it was a Communist reich
Trying to install remote mics
Inside of teeth & suchlike!

Our Light in the winter -----
Pray for us sinners
Now & at the hour of our death.
Our Light in the winter -----
Pray for us sinners
Now & at the hour of our death.

Lutheran to the last, my father would say, "When the pillars are overthrown, what can the just man do?" To which I'd probably respond, "Far, there are no more pillars of Hiram now in Babylon, much less a rock to stand on another." & in the news now, Secretary Powell, that dependable Volvo of statesmen, admitted that the administration had erroneous information. They sentenced thousands to death & call it bluster. They made a desert & call it peace.

President Johnson said, "Help up
Those who've got parents who gave up
Some long, long time ago."
The kids who are dying by boatloads
Are children of those who came up owed
Some chance that never showed.

Willard Wirtz
Called them "The Lost Battalion":
The young men out of school, out of the workforce, out of options.
The Alger myth propped up the Trickle Down theories
Until the bootstrap roots got pulled up by old Dirksen's legalese.
The early hope went south & turned into bets hedged
While the party that's now using them as cannon fodder blocked their passage.
The endless cycle works their parents on a hamster wheel,
Then sends them home to sit & wonder why it is they don't just steal.

Our Light in the winter -----
Pray for us sinners
Now & at the hour of our death.
Our Light in the winter -----
Pray for us sinners
Now & at the hour of our death.

Bergman never filmed such eyes
As those I saw on that child
Watching our jeeps driving by:
Pinpricks gone blank, heartbreakingly resigned smile.

It never dims, the need to understand what's happened, & it seems I'm devouring faster than ever: Conrad's Victory, The Short Stories Of Truman Capote, Dr Robert Coles, & anything on LBJ. (We both know something about having our conversations taped.) Only now are the lessons he learned during that "liberal interlude" becoming obvious: the hardening of positions, the death of the centrism, & the bitter crop of cynicism that grew to fruition in the American '60's.

President Johnson had said he
Wished they had viewed his Society
As first steps at the start,
But when GOP sounded dissent
& sacrifice proved inconvenient,
The USA lost heart.

It's the graveyard
For promises we didn't keep -----
When the price tag was seen, the people's zeal went atrophied.
The War On Poverty's cost had proved prohibitive;
It seems there is a limit to how much we'll pay to have us all live
As equals.
40 years after they demonized
The Great Society, our Lost Battalion's gained in size:
400,000 then, some 7 million added, &
Let's not forget the thousands, young, now buried in the sand.