We are still waiting.
Waiting for the answer.
What I mean by the answer
is not just something that satisfies your mind
so you stop thinking about the problem and feel comfortable again,
but I mean an answer that takes ahold of you,
that won't leave you alone,
that makes you act its way,
that won't let you act any other way,
that you go to sleep with,
and wake up with,
and it hasn't changed.
Freedom.
The word freedom.
Freedom the word.
A good word freedom.
But who using it means it?
What we've got now is half of the answer,
and where an answer's concerned,
a half's worse than none.
Freedom.
I have seen men fighting for their freedom here in a America,
fighting to make the law mean what the law says,
fighting to make the BIll of RIghts mean what the Bill of Rights says.
These are the things we can't help remembering,
these are the things that give us pause:
the beaten picket at the mill gate,
the tear gas and the riot squad,
the kneeling children in the berry fields.
The slum.
The slums.
The slums upon slums upon slums upon slums
and nothing really done.
Freedom here?
What freedom?
Whose freedom?
When freedom?
The freedom of children to labor in the fields?
The freedom of the tractor to plow under the sharecropper?
That is not the freedom we mean to fight for.
The answer:
Freedom the word.
The word freedom.
Worn smooth in the mouths of the orators,
slick as an old coin in the pocket.
A word of clean silver, though.
Freedom meaning?
Of the press to fight against freedom in the here and now?
Of the few to own and the rest to be lucky to work?
The old coin freedom is worn slick and smooth,
the inscriptions rubbed off and the eagle dim
but it is clean silver, and can be re-minted.
We are still waiting.
Waiting for the answer.
