Where Are You Now, My Son ? Lyrics

It's walking to the battleground that always makes me cryI've met so few folks in my time who weren't afraid to dieBut dawn bleeds with the people here and morning skies are redAs young girls load up bicycles with flowers for the deadAn aging woman picks along the craters and the rubbleA piece of cloth, a bit of shoe, a whole lifetime of troubleA sobbing chant comes from her throat and splits the morning airThe single son she had last night is buried under herThey say that the war is doneWhere are you now, my son?An old man with unsteady gait and beard of ancient whiteBent to the ground with arms outstretched faltering in his plightI took his hand to steady him, he stood and did not turnBut smiled and wept and bowed and mumbled softly, "Danke shoen"The children on the roadsides of the villages and townsWould stand around us laughing as we stood like giant clownsThe mourning bands told whom they'd lost by last night's phantom messengerAnd they spoke their only words in English, "Johnson, Nixon, Kissinger"Now that the war's being wonWhere are you now, my son?The siren gives a running break to those who live in townTake the children and the blankets to the concrete undergroundSometimes we'd sing and joke and paint bright pictures on the wallAnd wonder if we would die well and if we'd loved at allThe helmetless defiant ones sit on the curb and stareAt tracers flashing through the sky and planes bursting in airBut way out in the villages no warning comes before a blastThat means a sleeping child will never make it to the doorThe days of our youth were funWhere are you now, my son?From the distant cabins in the sky where no man hears the soundOf death on earth from his own bombs, six pilots were shot downNext day six hulking bandaged men were dazzled by a roomOf newsmen. Sally keep the faith, let's hope this war ends soonIn a damaged prison camp where they no longer had commandThey shook their heads, what irony, we thought peace was at handThe preacher read a Christmas prayer and the men kneeled on the groundThen sheepishly asked me to sing "They Drove Old Dixie Down"Yours was the righteous gunWhere are you now, my son?We gathered in the lobby celebrating Chrismas EveThe French, the Poles, the Indians, Cubans and VietnameseThe tiny tree our host had fixed sweetened familiar psalmsBut the most sacred of Christmas prayers was shattered by the bombsSo back into the shelter where two lovely women roseAnd with a brilliance and a fierceness and a gentleness which frozeThe rest of us to silence as their voices soared with joyOutshining every bomb that fell that night upon HanoiWith bravery we have sunBut where are you now, my son?Oh people of the shelters what a gift you've given meTo smile at me and quietly let me share your agonyAnd I can only bow in utter humbleness and askForgiveness and forgiveness for the things we've brought to passThe black pyjama'd culture that we tried to kill with pellet holesAnd rows of tiny coffins we've paid for with our soulsHave built a spirit seldom seen in women and in menAnd the white flower of Bac Mai will surely blossom once againI've heard that the war is doneThen where are you now, my son?