This is in a way also a poem about the mismanagement
of civilization.
And it's about that-- it's about that feeling,
I'm sure you've had.
It seems generic and contemporary,
where you're in a Walmart or a drug store or something
like that, and--
I'm struggling with this microphone--
and you're walking down the aisles,
looking for your latest purchase to cry out for your attention.
And you hear the muzak that's being played
and you recognize a song that you once
held dear has been turned into xylophone music.
Same feeling you get when you hear Thoreau's words
being used to sell cars.
And so this is about--
it's like hearing John Lennon's "Imagine," you know,
when you're in the Walgreens.
You know, there's something really depressing about it.
So, this is about hearing the old Bob Dylan song,
"It's a Hard Rain's Going to Fall,"
which is an apocalyptic song predicting
the end of the Earth, or at least a serious paradigm
change.
And it's about hearing--
it's about hearing that, and it sort of plays off of that.
It's called "Hard Rain."
"After I heard 'It's a Hard Rain's Going to Fall'
played softly by an accordion quartet
through the ceiling speakers at the Springdale Shopping Mall,
I understood there's nothing we can't pluck the stinger from,
nothing we can't turn into a soft drink flavor or a t-shirt.
Even serenity can become something horrible
if you make a commercial about it, using
smiling white-haired people quoting Thoreau to sell
retirement homes in the Everglades
where the swamp has been drained and bulldozed
into a 19 hole golf course with electrified alligator barriers.
You can't keep beating yourself up,
Billy, I heard the therapist say to the teenage murderer,
about all those people you killed.
You just have to be the best person
you can be one day at a time.
And everybody in the audience claps and weeps
a little, because the level of deep feeling has been touched.
And they want to believe that the power of forgiveness
is greater than the power of consequence, or history.
Dear Abby, my father is a businessman who travels.
Each time he returns from one of his trips,
his shoes and trousers are covered with blood,
but he never forgets to bring me a nice present.
Should I say something?
Signed, America.
I used to think I was not part of this,
that I could mind my own business and get along,
but that was just another song that
had been taught to me since birth, whose words I was
humming under my breath as I was walking through the Springdale
Mall."