Sunday, November 11, 2007

Give Us Our Peace



Give us a peace equal to the war
Or else our souls will be unsatisfied,
And we will wonder what we have fought for
And why the many died.

Give us a peace of accepting every challenge --
The challenge of the poor, the black, of all denied,
The challenge of the vast colonial world
That long has had so little justice by its side.

Give us a peace that dares us to be wise.
Give us a peace that dares us to be strong.
Give us a peace that dares us still uphold
Throughout the peace our battle against wrong.

Give us a peace that is not cheaply used,
A peace that is no clever scheme,
A people's peace for which men can enthuse,
A peace that brings reality to our dream.

Give us a peace that will produce great schools --
As the war produced great armament,
A peace that will wipe out our slums --
As war wiped out our foes on evil bent.

Give us a peace that will enlist
A mighty army serving human kind,
Not just an army geared to kill,
But trained to help the living mind.

An army trained to shape our common good
And bring about a world of brotherhood.

Langston Hughes
25 August, 1945


Marlene Dietrich - Lili Marleen (buy here)
Stars - Celebration Guns (buy here)
Kate Bush - Army Dreamers (buy here)

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Lovely words.

All you need for perfection on this post are 11 comments.

davyh said...

Lovely piece FiL. Ah, the hopes of 1945...

Anonymous said...

i love that stars song and it saddens me deeply that it's still timely.

Colin said...

A great man with such hopeful words, very well chosen my friend and lovely musical choices as well. This hit the spot, paused for some thoughts.

FiL said...

Thanks all, I think we are in agreement...