|
THIS IS OUR COUNTRY HERE
This is our country here as far as you can see no matter which way you walk or No matter what spot of it you stand on And when you have crossed her as many times as I have you will see as many ugly things about her as pretty things You will hear whole gangs of travelers and settlers arguing about her. What she is, how she come to be, what you are supposed to do here. and you will hear some argue at you That she is so beautiful you are supposed to spend your life just feeling her pretty parts, Sucking in her sweetest breezes and tasting her fairest odors, looking at her brightest colored scenes, And I would say that gang has the wrong notion. And there are some bunches that tell you she is all ugly and all dirty, that there is nothing good about her, nothing free, nothing clean, that she is all slums, shacks, rot, filth, stink, and bad odors, loud words of bitter flavors, Well, this herd is big and I heard them often and I heard them loud, but I come to think that they too was just as wrong as the first outfit,
Because I seen the pretty and I seen the ugly and it was because I knew the pretty part that I wanted to change the ugly part, Because I hated the dirty part that I knew how to feel the love for the cleaner part,
I looked in a million of her faces and eyes, and I told myself there was a look on that face that was good, if I could see it there, in back of all of the shades and shadows of fear and doubt and ignorance and tangles of debts and worries,
And I guess it is these things that make our country look all lopsided to some of us, lopped over onto the good and easy side or over onto the bad and the hard side,
I know that the people that run our desks and offices got so full of the desire to grab enough money to run away and hide on, that they let this thought run them, instead of the bigger plan, well, this has always been a hard word to say, but It could very truly be that our office people are doing the best they know how to do, But we had ought to teach ourselves better and higher than this before we run ourselves and put ourselves into our offices.
Words by Woody Guthrie
|