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This poem was first released on the poems, prayers and promises album. it is the only album it has been released on. |
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Once upon a time in the land of hushabye |
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Around about the wondrous days of yore |
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I came across a sort of box |
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Bound up with chains and locked with locks |
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And labelled kindly do not touch, it's war |
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Decree was issued round about |
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All with a flourish and a shout |
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And a gaily coloured mascot tripping lightly on before |
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Don't fiddle with this deadly box or break the chains or pick the locks |
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And please, don't ever play about with war |
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Well, the children understood |
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Children happen to be good |
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They were just as good around the time of yaw |
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They didn't try to pick the locks, or break into that deadly box |
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They never tried to play about with war |
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Mummies didn't either |
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Sisters, aunts, grannies neither |
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Cause they were quiet and sweet and pretty in those wondrous days of yaw |
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Well, very much the same as now, not the ones to blame somehow |
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For opening up that deadly box of war |
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But someone did |
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Someone battered in the lid |
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And spilled the insides out across the floor |
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A sort of bouncy, bumpy ball made up of guns and flags and all the tears and horror and the death that goes with war |
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It bounced right out |
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And went bashing all about |
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And bumping into everything and stored |
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And what was sad and most unfair is that it didn't seem to care who much it bumped |
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Or why, or what, or for |
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It bumped the children mainly |
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And i'll tell you this quite plainly |
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It bumps them every day, and more and more, and leaves them dead and burned and dying |
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Thousands of them sick and crying |
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Cause when it bumps, it's really very sore |
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Now there's a way to stop the ball |
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It isn't difficult at all |
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All it takes is wisdom, i'm absolutely sure that we could get it back into the box |
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And buy the chains and lock the locks |
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No one seems to want to save the children any more |
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Well, that's the way it all appears |
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Cause it's been bouncing round for years and years |
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In spite of all the wisdom wiz since those wondrous days of yaw |
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And the time they came across the box |
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Bound up with chains and locked with locks |
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And labelled kindly do not touch, it's war |
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Words by lascelles |
