The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #56795   Message #3566835
Posted By: ollaimh
14-Oct-13 - 12:40 PM
Thread Name: Greatest Anti-War Song Ever?
Subject: RE: Greatest Anti-War Song Ever?
phil ochs also wrote the great song: "the marines have landed on the shores of santo domingo"

I wonder if bruce Cockburn's :" if I had a rocket launcher" qualifies but it's a great song , as his older song:"look away across the bay, yanqui gunboat come this way"

and if you are into poetry I do like "the naming of parts" by reid but w.h. Auden wrote the definitive poem about mass war.if you haven't read:"the shield of Achilles" your are not really participating in the human condition.

Ayden's "sonnet from china have many great anti war poems as well--especially the original unedited version. like

here war is harmless like a monument
a telephone is talking to a man
pins on maps declare that troops were sent
a boy brings milk in bowls,there is a plan

for living men in terror of their lives
who thirst at dawn who were to thirst at noon
who can be lat, and are, and miss their wives
and unlike an idea can die too soon.

but ideas can be real although men die
for we have seen a myriad of faces
estatic from one lie

and pins on maps can really point to places
where live is evil now
nanking, dachau