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Where Are You Now My Son
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Joan Baez
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(Words and Music by Joan Baez)
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It's walking to the battleground that always makes me cry
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I've met so few folks in my time who weren't afraid to die
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But dawn bleeds with the people here and morning skies are red
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As young girls load up bicycles with flowers for the dead
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An aging woman picks along the craters and the rubble
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A piece of cloth, a bit of shoe, a whole lifetime of trouble
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A sobbing chant comes from her throat and splits the morning air
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The single son she had last night is buried under her
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They say that the war is done
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Where are you now, my son?
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An old man with unsteady gait and beard of ancient white
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Bent to the ground with arms outstretched faltering in his plight
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I took his hand to steady him, he stood and did not turn
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But smiled and wept and bowed and mumbled softly, "Danke shoen"
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The children on the roadsides of the villages and towns
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Would stand around us laughing as we stood like giant clowns
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The mourning bands told whom they'd lost by last night's phantom messenger
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And they spoke their only words in English, "Johnson, Nixon, Kissinger"
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Now that the war's being won
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Where are you now, my son?
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The siren gives a running break to those who live in town
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Take the children and the blankets to the concrete underground
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Sometimes we'd sing and joke and paint bright pictures on the wall
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And wonder if we would die well and if we'd loved at all
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The helmetless defiant ones sit on the curb and stare
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At tracers flashing through the sky and planes bursting in air
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But way out in the villages no warning comes before a blast
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That means a sleeping child will never make it to the door
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The days of our youth were fun
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Where are you now, my son?
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From the distant cabins in the sky where no man hears the sound
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Of death on earth from his own bombs, six pilots were shot down
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Next day six hulking bandaged men were dazzled by a room
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Of newsmen. Sally keep the faith, let's hope this war ends soon
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In a damaged prison camp where they no longer had command
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They shook their heads, what irony, we thought peace was at hand
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The preacher read a Christmas prayer and the men kneeled on the ground
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Then sheepishly asked me to sing "They Drove Old Dixie Down"
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Yours was the righteous gun
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Where are you now, my son?
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We gathered in the lobby celebrating Chrismas Eve
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The French, the Poles, the Indians, Cubans and Vietnamese
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The tiny tree our host had fixed sweetened familiar psalms
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But the most sacred of Christmas prayers was shattered by the bombs
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So back into the shelter where two lovely women rose
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And with a brilliance and a fierceness and a gentleness which froze
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The rest of us to silence as their voices soared with joy
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Outshining every bomb that fell that night upon Hanoi
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With bravery we have sun
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But where are you now, my son?
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Oh people of the shelters what a gift you've given me
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To smile at me and quietly let me share your agony
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And I can only bow in utter humbleness and ask
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Forgiveness and forgiveness for the things we've brought to pass
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The black pyjama'd culture that we tried to kill with pellet holes
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And rows of tiny coffins we've paid for with our souls
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Have built a spirit seldom seen in women and in men
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And the white flower of Bac Mai will surely blossom once again
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I've heard that the war is done
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Then where are you now, my son?
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© 1973 Chandos Music (Ascap)
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