Ancestral Voices dominate
this sordid Sabbath
with arguments of war,
dialogues of destruction.

Conflicting claims on reason
raise the question
which is grain and which is leaven,
which the bread and which the oven?

Mountain of Lower Manhattan
swarming with abandoned faces,
smoking, stinking Rock of Ages,
consolidated flesh, cement and circuitry
seeded by sorrow, Rise!

Like vapor from a cauldron, Rise!
Remains of ruin,
take form and countenance,
a name to summon by,
eyes a fury of compassion.

Draw your dusty robe about you,
stride the Hudson to the sea,
upon, above, below, go silent
past rimed ruins of Atlantis
and Titanic's fabled shell
toward the battlefield of nations.
Lift the innocent from
the field of restitution,
pluck missiles from the sky
like flaming blossoms.

Let your head be crowned
with roses, ribboned,
Lady Liberty embodied
to the eyes of innocence -
to others coarse, unkempt,
snarled with blooded thorns,
Mother of Vampires.

Let the blameless see a unicorn,
where others see a lion.

Who dare ring History's fatal bell,
pave the road to Heaven
with the cobblestones of Hell?

Robert Hunter

I'm just so old school, someone should shoot me.

I like poetry with rhyme and meter.

But thought provoking, sir.

Just ain't the same without Jerry.

Jerry?

[img]http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/News/9905/26/showbuzz/springer.jpg[/img]

Harken, O viewers, and you shall see
The trashiest shock-fest broadcast on TV:
Freaks, sluts and morons, all screaming in rage
While Jerry, brave Jerry, prods them on from the stage.

I liked it...  good imagery.

Jerry Gracia was the man who put the music to Robert Hunters words.


It is a vivid image