Story Behind the Song
Recorded in 1986, after I'd heard an emminent pyschologist suggest that people were in deep denial about the Mutually Assured Destruction "policy" of government defense officials...the phrase "psychically numb" got me to thinking about being born the day after the "Trinity" test in New Mexico in July, 1945
Lyrics
When you were just a child, still growing up wild
You might have been told not to suck your thumb
But ever since '45 most everyone alive
Sure seems to be sold on psychically numb
And those who build H-bombs don't seem to have qualms
They have become terribly bold - taking it to the edge and then some
Does doing that get them the power that they want
It really is the problem that does grievously haunt
this old world down deep in its soul
Now, don't you think that it's time to point out the crime
Elijah's sweet horn never could be more dear
It's so easy to hide ONE's inherited pride
A full face of scorn laughs at most any tear
That falls out of heart whenever you start
To heed signs that warn the END is most definitely near
Don't you bother to listen to any of those taunts
Like your first rainbow glistens, you can shrive all those haunts
And grow into a sense of the whole
It's not the END, if you know it
It's not the END, if you know it
It's not the END, if you show it
Like ONE who truly understands
It's coming soon, if you make it
It's coming soon, if you make it
It's coming soon, when you take it
Into gentle, loving hands
When we live together, even stormy weather
Doesn't seem so bad, it soon passes away
Just so, the flags of the world, may one fine day be furled
For a festival we had, so we ALL could say:
A sense of planet earth is now coming to birth
Like the love of a lass and a lad, a new world is like the first of May
And there's no time like the present (...as if that never were true)
Be you king, queen, or Peasant, what's there left to do
Except let time take it's toll
YES! There's no time like the present (...as if that never were true)
Be you king, queen, or Peasant, what's there left to do
Except let time take it's toll
(When I sing this song live,
I repeat the bridge at the end of the third verse)
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