Album: Poems Prayers & Promises

The Box

Once upon a time
in the land of Hush-a-Bye
around about those wondrous days of yore,
they came across a sort of box
bound up with chains, and locked with locks
and labeled, ";Kindly do not touch, it's WAR.";
Well, a decree was issued 'round about
all with a flourish and a shout
and a gaily coloured mascot tripping light lightly on before.
Saying, ";Please don't fiddle with this box,
or break the chains, or pick the locks,
and don't ever mess about with war.";
Now, the children understood,
children happen to be good,
and they were just as good around the time of yore.
They didn't try to pick the locks,
or break into that deadly box,
and they never ever messed about with war.
Sisters didn't either;
Mommies, aunts, grannies neither.
'Cause they were quite and sweet and pretty in those wondrous days of yore.
Well, much the same as now,
and not the ones to blame somehow
for opening up that deadly box of war.
But someone did.
Someone battered in the lid,
and spread the insides out across the floor.
A sort of bouncy, bumpy ball
made of guns and flags and all the tears and horror and the death
that goes with war.
Well, it bounced right out
and went crashing all about
and bumping into everything in store.
And what was sad and most unfair
was that it didn't really seem to care
much who it bumped, or why, or what, or for.
It bumped the children mainly,
and I'll tell you this quite plainly;
it bumps them every day and more,
and leaves them dead and burned and dying,
thousands of them sick and crying -
'cause when it bumps it's really very sore.
There is a way to stop the ball.
It isn't difficult at all.
All it takes is wisdom and I'm absolutely sure
we could get it back into the box
and bind the chains and lock the locks
but no-one seems to want to save the children anymore.
Well, that's the way it all appears,
'cause it's been bouncing around for years and years.
In spite of all the wisdom whizzed since those wondrous days of yore.
And the day they came upon the box
bound up with chains, and locked with locks,
and labeled, ";Kindly do not touch, it's WAR.";
John Denver
Poems, Prayers and Promises album