Goodbye to 2020
Prologue:
We live our lives in a spiral
That begins and ends in a year
And still we exclaim, “Is it always the same?
Will a FUTURE ever appear?”
(Will a true future ever appear?)
**A**
Goodbye to a year that was frozen
In habits forever engrained
With the tyrants enclosed in their stock market castles
With silk-puckered gowns & brocade
While the hospitals fill
With the fevered
While their families look on in vain
As their loved ones lie dying
In fierce isolation
Unheard and untouched and unnamed
**B** [Chorus]
Goodbye to the children in cages
Mad rulers who bluster and rage
Hello to the unions of lovers and leapers
The she’s and the he’s and they’s
And we’ll be singing
A new beginning
And we’ll be living
The earth’s own song
We’ll be her friend
Not her extractors
Be her servants
Seeking to mend
**C**
There’s a school that surrounded by gardens
A prairie and two thousand trees
That they planted themselves in the dirt that they’ve held
Like the frogs that slip into the stream
And they’ll watch it unfold as they come to know
What it means to be humble and green
What it means to be humble and green
**D**
Goodbye to the murder of black men
As they stand or they walk or they speak
The knee on the neck, the shots in the back
No questions, no pause, no relief
No questions, no pause, no release
Hello to the wonder of
Knowing each other
Our music, our histories revealed
Our voices and yearnings
Our failures and turnings
Give us grace to recover ourselves
Give us grace to discover ourselves
-[Repeat B - Chorus]-
**E**
And thus we’ll envision
We’ll sit up and listen
To the facts we’ve evaded so long
Goodbye to the blindness
Hello to the kindness
We’ve left buried deep
We’ve forgotten to speak
With our hearts and our quivering tongues
With our hearts and our opening tongues
**F**
At the edge of the sky there’s a window
Where the faces of others arise
Through the mist of a jungle
The breath of a tunnel
And a village still rich and alive
The children leap into the river
They lift up their faces and shiver
Haul sunfish in hands for their dinner
And laugh the world back with their eyes
And laugh the world back with their lives
**
Epilogue:
We live our lives in a spiral
That begins and ends in a year
And still we exclaim, “Is it always the same?
Will a FUTURE ever appear?”
(Will a true future ever appear?)
© Terry Hermsen, 2021
To listen to the song performed, click on the orange link immediately below:
YouTube link: Goodbye to 2020 ~ Performed by Bill Walker
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| Photo from the "On the Road to Happiness" website home page |
