Broken Tuesday
Quoted text from "Mortal City" by Dar Williams

I wish for time but it just passes me by-
eaten up by plans for tomorrow,
little mundane things of no consequence,
or reading books to write the papers for school.
Eaten up by illness and worries- what tomorrow?
As the president pronounces from the TV screen-
statements the blare as headlines in the media-,
I wonder if, and then were, he'll have to go.
Before I wished he didn't have to go at all,
though I was glad it wasn't Macedonia.
Now I hope they'll send him soon, to Kosovo.
Let him keep the peace of that troubled nation
instead of fighting the troubles of our own.
I just want him to always come home.
His country should not ask of him
the things that may be asked of him,
to kill innocents for the sake of revenge.
How far must the pain of Tuesday spread?
I was lucky enough to have lost no one,
though I had two close friends in New York.
For what should I, and so many million
mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, wives,
grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles,
cousins, best friends, girlfriends, boyfriends,
lovers, and life partners join the suffering?
Is the pain of millions hurting not enough?
For millions of hearts already broken
have left millions of souls crying.

"I think I have a special kind of hearing tonight"
If we retaliate they will only strike again.
"I hear the neighbors upstairs"
Most are innocents, our neighbors, our brothers.
"I hear my heart beating"
Their hearts beat the same as ours, and they suffer
"I hear one thousand hearts beating at the hospital"
as do innocents from America to Northern Ireland,
"And one thousand hearts by their bedsides waiting"
while loved ones feel their hearts slowly break.
"Saying that's my love in the white gown,"
They suffer because they love someone.
"We are not lost in the Mortal City"
Where there is love there is hope.
"We are not lost in the Mortal City"

America does not have to ask my friend
to slaughter innocents in her name.
America does not have to sacrifice
her manhood in the name of justice.
The pain of Tuesday can stop were it rests,
and leave only the suffering already caused.
We are better than the terrorists
and we can be the big man this time.
Let us lay to rest what has happened.
Allow America time enough to heal.
We should talk of overcoming,
not of subduing and retribution.
If we must display American might,
do not ravage an already leveled country,
instead defend the second class citizens
in Northern Ireland and across the globe.
Send peacekeeping forces to Kosovo
and were ever else they might serve.
We are stronger than the terrorists;
we do not have to be more violent.
Still we rush forth, seeking revenge
against the terrorists and their nations,
before we have had time to begin to heal.
I wish for time but it just passes me by
eaten up by plans for tomorrow,
little mundane things of no consequence,
or reading books to write the papers for school.
Eaten up by illness and worries- what tomorrow?
What tomorrow?