My play-cousin, Mary Lee, has been posting all about Pete Seeger’s lyricist, Malvina Reynolds, this past month, and Reynolds’ song about failing fell in a good spot for me. But I didn’t want to admit to Mary Lee that I’d never heard, um, of Malvina Reynolds, and I couldn’t identify more than one Pete Seeger song if paid. (*cough* I know. Sorry. “This Land Is Your Land?” that’s all I’ve got.) Protest songs weren’t necessarily my era, and our household was all about the religious music, except for illicit Manilow and the odd easy-listening in the car on the way to the grocery store. (My mother, the maverick.)
So, I thought Mary Lee’s favorite Seeger lyrics was a good thing to post today, for my Christian peeps, and for my Jewish, Muslim, and Generally Not Into It peeps as well. It spins well off of Tupac’s “The Rose that Grew From Concrete:“
Did you hear about the rose that grew
from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature’s law is wrong it
learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else ever cared.
Water drills stone. Roots shift concrete. Grass covers all. Whether your rose or grass is HaShem, Jesus, the Prophet, or sheer granite determination to get through these next few days, months, and weeks, may your sneaky, rooted self find all the cracks, and may your push never falter, that the concrete which stifles us might buckle, and a necessary growth take place.
God Bless the Grass
God bless the grass that grows through the crack.
They roll the concrete over it to try and keep it back.
The concrete gets tired of what it has to do,
It breaks and it buckles and the grass grows thru,
And God bless the grass.
God bless the truth that fights toward the sun,
They roll the lies over it and think that it is done
It moves through the ground and reaches for the air,
And after a while it is growing everywhere,
And God bless the grass.
God bless the grass that breaks through cement,
It’s green and it’s tender and it’s easily bent,
But after a while it lifts up it’s head,
For the grass is living and the stone is dead.
And God bless the grass.
God bless the grass that’s gentle and low
Its roots they are deep and it’s will is to grow.
And God bless the truth, the friend of the poor,
And the wild grass growing at the poor man’s door,
And God bless the grass.~ Malvina Reynolds
Pax.