***Songs To While Away The  Class By- Bruce Springsteen's "Born In The U. S. A.

 

 

…he came out of the womb all dusty with an American breathe, had travelled, womb-travelled down in the hills and hollows of the bowels of the country, down in Appalachia great green and gray slag hill country. Down where the first restless wanderers from the European sinkhole had placed their stake, had decided that they would make it or break it there, had decided that that good green earth, granite gray or not, would be their sacred home. Yes, he came out of that wandering stock, that crowd that was pushed out of Europe, out of the old countries, maybe run out of there just before some high sheriff was ready to pounce.

Who knows the truth of the mist-in-time stories, and whether they were true, but somehow they had made it to virgin shores (well almost virgin since some peoples, prospering by their own lights and not ready for the white scourge about to come down on them, were already here but remember that they had staked their sacred claim, some fandango common law claim, here). And they stayed, stayed until that good green earth turned brown, until the blue skies turned gray with the soots of the earth, until the music from the mountain winds turned sour and called for leaving. Yes, he came out of that dusty womb America with a faded sound of some gypsy fiddler mournfully played on some broken- down front porch.

Came too directly from the loins of wandering sons fresh from muck-filled, rains splattered hellish fights against the madmen night-takers of the world, the ferocious dark-spirited men Europe and Asia, against those who wished him and his kind to stay quiet, to take it, and not squawk, not squawk at all. But his kindred had not come out of the European mist to buckle under, to go quietly, although they were quiet taciturn men (who would go to their collective graves all taciturn and quiet keeping those fights, the sights of those fights, the horror down in some secret place). And so they left the hills and hollows, left the river towns, left the ghettos and barrios of the urban flight, left the vast wheat fields and swampy bayous and made other places their sacred homes and stopped wandering, for a while.

Stopped, thinking too that those dirty nasty fights (kept silent about, kept to themselves) would bring some new dispensation, would make them count for something in the go-getter night. But it was not to be, and their spawn was cursed with that wandering blood to seek out why the new dispensation had passed them by, why the sacred land had turned out to be just another human sink- hole.  That they had to move on too, to find out why life had not given them a blessed break, has turned to ashes in their mouths. They were legion, all seeking shelter from the whirlwind storms that tore up their beautiful dreams.  

That curse cost the wandering sons, cost them plenty, as they met the new day with scorns, with ridicules, with, hell, with indifference if it came right down to it, and their sons would bear the mark of it, some mystic mark of Cain, all confused, all sullen, all quiet and taciturn too. It took a long time to figure things out to figure out that he had come out of the womb down in the hills and hollows and that he was as rooted to his sacred if misunderstood land as any forbears run out of some trans-ocean country. And as he figured that out he could begin to hear some misty mountain wind coming down into a valley, swirling around some broken- down front porch with a lonesome fiddler using that wind-song for a bow…        

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Bruce Springsteen Born In The U. S. A. Lyrics
Born down in a dead man town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
You end up like a dog that's been beat too much
Till you spend half your life just covering up

Born in the u.s.a., I was born in the u.s.a.
I was born in the u.s.a., born in the u.s.a.

Got in a little hometown jam
So they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to a foreign land
To go and kill the yellow man

Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man said son if it was up to me
Went down to see my v.a. man
He said son, don't you understand

I had a brother at Khe Sahn
Fighting off the Viet Cong
They're still there, he's all gone

He had a woman he loved in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms now

Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I'm ten years burning down the road
Nowhere to run aint got nowhere to go

Born in the u.s.a., I was born in the u.s.a.
Born in the u.s.a., I'm a long gone daddy in the u.s.a.
Born in the u.s.a., born in the u.s.a.
Born in the u.s.a., I'm a cool rocking daddy in the u.s.a.