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They came with blaring horns and banners
Crudely costumed in their march
Specters of writhing dead and dying
A mask of their discontent
Across the line of color, creed, and class
Across proprietary claim of each gender
Each mother for each son
Each father for himself
Each woman armed with ransomed pride
Each person with a private cause
Each child heady with the ten minute applause
The cameras bring to light
I watched a hostile procession
To their country's foreign wars

And in the meanwhile a pregnant mother
From an hospital near Harlem was turned away
A shelter there had no more room for a black father
A teacher saw the ratio of her class
Grew demographically like a third world country
Decided she would not teach in the Bronx
But the Board of Ed had no better offer
A social worker calling on a restaurant
Could not understand
Why the days unused food was thrown away
While so many shivered in hunger

O yes, I did applaud
The activists condemnation of war
The one between the rich and poor
Between the black and white
Between the black on black ghetto drive-by
Between the wall street people
And that white family who eats at my table
Between the cold and formal rules
We use to mask our austerity
That gives us superiority
O this an old war, a long war
The war why all wars are fought
The bat in a spider's web ridiculously caught.

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