The Best Anti-War Song Ever

The best anti-war song ever written actually began its life as a poem. But like most fine poems, it contained an abundance of musical elements and concrete, vivid imagery. So much so that folk singer John Gorka readily saw the opportunity to turn it into a haunting, masterful song, so plaintive and quietly anguished that it throws off the power of its anti-war outrage under the cloak of a mother’s muffled sobs.

“Let them in, Peter,” implores the first line, and we immediately know which “Peter” the poet Elma Dean was referring to in the dark days of 1942, when the war was going very badly in post-Pearl Harbor America. This is the Peter who does not need a last name. The sentence finishes: “…they  are very tired.”

And the next lines:

      Give them couches where the angels sleep, and light those fires
      Let them wake whole again, to brand new dawns
      Fired by the sun, not wartime’s bloody guns

The poem/song is all of 15 lines, and the focus is loss—not the survivors’ loss of their beloved young man, though we know that will haunt all their days—but the even more tragic, more haunting loss of young life cut short and unlived. (I had “unloved” there in a typo, but it, too, fits, for all the loving the too-young dead will miss.)

***

There will be experiences and maturity unattained, sights unseen, tastes unsavored, bodies never conjoined in love by these young men, and their elders at home feel it all the more for having had such experiences themselves, now forever denied their sons.

       So give them things they like, let them make some noise
       Give dance hall bands not golden harps, to these our boys
       And let them love, Peter. For they’ve had no time

“So many of our sons, some of my friend’s sons, were being killed. I was going around with tears in my eyes,” Dean told a reporter in a 1961 interview.

       They should have trees and bird songs and hills to climb
       The taste of summer, in a ripened pear,
       And girls sweet as meadow wind, with flowering hair

***

***
Gorka’s voice is perfectly attuned to the gravity of the subject matter. The natural outrage engendered by war—We do WHAT to our fellow human beings, for WHAT reasons?—collapses in the almost unspeakable sadness of tragic, senseless loss. If there was ever a “good war” for which pacifism or isolationism would have been a hopelessly inadequate response, it was World War II.

Yet for all its nobility and sound purpose to purge the monstrosity growing within our species at the time, it was still, at bottom, stupid, as all war is stupid, and a devastating indictment of our collective failure, thus far, to tame our inner demons of fear, greed, distrust and aggression.

      Tell them how they are missed. Say not to fear;
       It’s going to be all right with us down here.

Except that it’s not quite all right with us down here, most especially for those whose sons—and now daughters—remain frozen in time, last seen perhaps waving from the doors to the airport terminal, looking snappy in their military issues, shoes shined, bodies erect, the parents’ minds spinning there at the curb, remembering their child’s first steps, the tears after the fall from the swing, the Little League games, the Sunday family barbecues, the cuddling with books, the falling asleep in the car seat on the return from Disneyland.

And now they are off to the newest front, the latest crossroads where human savagery seeks to triumph again. And they will not be returning this time, and there will be no swings or Little League or barbecues to enjoy with the children they will never have.

Such incalculable, inconsolable loss.

***

In my generation’s truly senseless war, Country Joe McDonald launched a direct satirical assault on its stupidity, lacing his “Fish Cheer/I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” with a profane call-and-response that underlies a generally upbeat, “Up yours!” tone. The song invariably elicits laughter that, for me listening in again now in the shadow of “Let Them In,” seems to veer toward a kind of smug superiority, as if its listeners would never be caught alive or dead with a violent thought or deed.

But of course, that is not true. We are all implicated; we are all LBJ, we are aboard those tanks invading Poland, we are all riding that bomb down through the skies to Hiroshima.

On this Memorial Day, may we live in peace and remember with the solemnity that is its due.

***

The full poem, followed by Gorka’s live performance of the song:

Letter to Saint Peter

Let them in, Peter, they are very tired;
Give them the couches where the angels sleep.
Let them wake whole again to new dawns fired
With sun, not war. And may their peace be deep.
Remember where the broken bodies lie . . .
And give them things they like. Let them have noise.
God knows how young they were to have to die!
Give swing bands, not gold harps, to these our boys.
Let them love, Peter–they have had no time–
Girls sweet as meadow wind, with flowering hair. . .
They should have trees and bird song, hills to climb–
The taste of summer in a ripened pear.
Tell them how they are missed. Say not to fear;
It’s going to be all right with us down here.
—Elma Dean

***

Follow and/or Like this blog’s Facebook page in between posts for daily snippets of wisdom and photography from all over: http://www.facebook.com/andrew.hidas/

My thanks to the photographers:

Rotating banner photos (except for books) top of homepage courtesy of Elizabeth Haslam, some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing, see more at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhaslam/

Library books by Larry Rose, Redlands, California, all rights reserved, contact: larry@rosefoto.com

Young soldiers by Sgt. Ian Forsyth, courtesy of UK Ministry of Defense, some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing, see more at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/defenceimages/

Arlington National Cemetery by Trey Ratcliff, Austin, Texas, some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing, see more at: https://www.flickr.com/people/stuckincustoms/

Grief photo from the public domain

Related Posts

Taking America’s Measure:
Walt Whitman’s “Years of the Modern”

January 13, 2021

Jimmy Carter (Our First) Rock & Roll President

January 10, 2021

Sixth Annual “Songs of Summer”

June 21, 2018

Imperfect Interpretations: When the Song Sung Isn’t What the Song Said (Part 2)

June 5, 2015