Out of the flesh, out of the minds and hearts Of thousand upon thousand common men

Listen to the People
by Stephen Vincent Benet

Independence Day, 1941

NARRATOR:

This is Independence Day,
Fourth of July, the day we mean to keep,
Whatever happens and whatever falls
Out of a sky grown strange;
This is firecracker day for sunburnt kids,
The day of the parade,
Slambanging down the street.
Listen to the parade!
There's J. K. Burney's float,
Red-white-and-blue crepe-paper on the wheels,
The Fire Department and the local Grange,
There are the pretty girls with their hair curled
Who represent the Thirteen Colonies,
The Spirit of East Greenwich, Betsy Ross,
Democracy, or just some pretty girls.
There are the veterans and the Legion Post
(Their feet are going to hurt when they get home),
The band, the flag, the band, the usual crowd,
Good-humored, watching, hot,
Silent a second as the flag goes by,
Kidding the local cop and eating popsicles,
Jack Brown and Rosie Shapiro and Dan Shay,
Paul Bunchick and the Greek who runs the Greek's,
The black-eyed children out of Sicily,
The girls who giggle and the boys who push,
All of them there and all of them a nation.
And, afterwards,
There'll be ice-cream and fireworks and a speech
By Somebody the Honorable Who,
The lovers will pair off in the kind dark
And Tessie Jones, our honor-graduate,
Will read the Declaration.
That's how it is. It's always been that way.
That's our Fourth of July, through war and peace,
That's our Fourth of July.

And a lean farmer on a stony farm
Came home from mowing, buttoned up his shirt
And walked ten miles to town,
Musket in hand.
He didn't know the sky was falling down
And, it may be, he didn't know so much.
But people oughtn't to be pushed around
By kings or any such.
A workman in the city dropped his tools.
An ordinary, small-town kind of man
Found himself standing in the April sun,
One of a ragged line
Against the skilled professionals of war,
The matchless infantry who could not fail,
Not for the profit, not to conquer worlds,
Not for the pomp or the heroic tale
But first, and principally, since he was sore.
They could do things in quite a lot of places.
They shouldn't do them here, in Lexington.
He looked around and saw his neighbors' faces. . . .

AN ANGRY VOICE:

Disperse, ye villains! Damn you, why don't you disperse?

A CALM VOICE:

Stand your ground, men. Don't fire unless fired upon. But, if they mean to have a war, let it begin here!

NARRATOR, RESUMING:

Well, that was that. And later, when he died
Of fever or a bullet in the guts,
Bad generalship, starvation, dirty wounds
Or any one of all the thousand things
That kill a man in wars,
He didn't die handsome but he did die free
And maybe that meant something. It could be.
Oh, it's not pretty! Say it all you like!
It isn't a bit pretty. Not one bit.
But that is how the liberty was won.
That paid for the firecrackers and the band.

A YOUNG VOICE, RADICAL:

Well, what do you mean, you dope?
Don't you know this is an imperialist, capitalist country, don't you?
Don't you know it's all done with mirrors and the bosses get the gravy, don't you?



Suppose some old guy with chin whiskers did get his pants shot off at a place called Lexington?
What does it mean to me?

AN OLDER VOICE, CONSERVATIVE:

My dear fellow, I myself am a son of a son of a son of the American Revolution,
But I can only view the present situation with the gravest alarm,
Because we are rapidly drifting into a dictatorship
And it isn't my kind of dictatorship, what's more.
The Constitution is dead and labor doesn't know its place,
And then there's all that gold buried at Fort Knox
And the taxes — oh, oh, oh!
Why, what's the use of a defense-contract if you can't make money out of your country?
Things are bad — things are very bad.
Already my Aunt Emmeline has had to shoot her third footman.
(He broke his leg passing cocktails and it was really a kindness.)
And, if you let the working-classes buy coal, they'll only fill it with bathtubs.
Don't you realize the gravity of the situation, don't you?
Won't you hide your head in a bucket and telegraph your congressman, opposing everything possible, including peace and war?

A TOTALITARIAN VOICE, PERSUASIVE:

My worthy American listeners,
I am giving you one more chance.
Don't you know that we are completely invincible, don't you?
Won't you just admit that we are the wave of the future, won't you?
You are a very nice, mongrel, disgusting people —
But, naturally, you need new leadership.
We can supply it. We've sent the same brand to fourteen nations.
It comes in the shape of a bomb and it beats as it sweeps as it cleans.
For those of you who like order, we can supply order.
We give the order. You take it.
For those of you who like efficiency, we can supply efficiency.
Look what we did to Coventry and Rotterdam!
For those of you who like Benito Mussolini, we can supply Benito Mussolini.
(He's three doors down to the left, at the desk marked second Vice President.)



Now be sensible — give up this corrupt and stupid nonsense of democracy,
And you can have the crumbs from our table and a trusty's job in our world-jail.

RADICAL VOICE:

Forget everything but the class-struggle. Forget democracy.

CONSERVATIVE VOICE:

Hate and distrust your own government. Whisper, hate and never look forward.
Look back wistfully to the good old, grand old days — the days when the boys said " The public be damned! " and got away with it.
Democracy's a nasty word, invented by the Reds.

TOTALITARIAN VOICE:

Just a little collaboration and you too can be part of the New Order.
You too can have fine new concentration camps and shoes made out of wood pulp. You too can be as peaceful as Poland, as happy and gay as France. Just a little collaboration. We have so many things to give you.
We can give you your own Hess, your own Himmler, your own Goering — all home grown and wrapped in cellophane. We've done it elsewhere. If you'll help, we can do it here.

RADICAL VOICE:

Democracy's a fake —

CONSERVATIVE:

Democracy's a mistake —

TOTALITARIAN:

Democracy is finished. We are the future.

( MUSIC UP AND OMINOUS )

NARRATOR, RESUMING:

The sky is dark, now, over the parade,
The sky's an altered sky, a sky that might be.

There's J. K. Burney's float
With funny-colored paper on the wheels
Or no — excuse me — used to be J. K.'s.
But the store's under different management
Like quite a lot of stores.
You see, J. K. got up in church one day,
After it all had happened and walked out
The day they instituted the new order.
They had a meeting. Held it in the church.
He just walked out. That's all.
That's all there is to say about J. K.,
Though I remember just the way he looked,
White-faced and chin stuck out.
I think they could have let the church alone.
It's kind of dreary, shutting up the church.
But don't you say I said so. Don't you say!
Listen to the parade!
There are the pretty girls with their hair curled,
Back from the labor camp.
They represent the League of Strength Through Joy.
At least, I guess it's that.
No, they don't go to high-school any more.
They get told where they go. We all get told.
And, now and then, it happens like Jack Brown,
Nice fellow, Jack. Ran the gas-station here.
But he was married to a You-Know-Who.
Fond of her, too.
I don't know why we never used to mind.
Why, she walked round like anybody else,
Kept her kids clean and joined the Ladies' Social.
Just shows you, doesn't it? But that's all done.
And you won't see her in the crowd today,
Her or the kids or Jack,
Unless you look six feet under the ground,
The lime-washed ground, the bitter prison ground
That hides the martyrs and the innocent,
And you won't see Dan Shay.
Dan was a Union man
And now we don't have Unions any more.
They wouldn't even let him take his specs,
The day the troopers came around for him.
And yet he needed specs. He had grey hair.
Funny — you keep remembering things like that.
Maybe he's still alive. It's hard to say.

(Half hysterically)

Listen to the parade!
The marching, marching, marching feet,
All with the same hard stamp!
The bands, the bands, the bands, the flags, the flags,
The sharp, mechanical, inhuman cheer
Dragged from the straining throats of the stiff crowd!
It's Independence — sorry, my mistake!
It's National Day — the Day of the New Order!
We let it happen — we forgot the old,
Bleak words of common sense, " Unite or Die, "
We fiddled and we squabbled and we scrapped,
We led a filibuster in the Senate,
We were quite ready for a sacrifice
Sometime, next Tuesday — but not yet, not now!
And the clock struck — and the bad dream was here.

A VOICE:

But you can't do this to me! I subscribed to the Party funds!

A VOICE:

You can't do this to me. We got laws. We got courts. We got unions.

A VOICE:

You can't do this to me. Why, I believe in Karl Marx!

A VOICE:

You can't do this to me. The Constitution forbids it.

A VOICE:

I was always glad to cooperate.

A VOICE:

It looked to me like good business.

A VOICE:

It looked to me like the class struggle.

A VOICE:

It looked to me like peace in our time.

TOTALITARIAN VOICE:

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Democracy is finished.
You are finished. We are the present!

( MUSIC UP AND DOWN )

NARRATOR:

That is one voice. You've heard it. Don't forget it.
And don't forget it can be slick or harsh,
Violent or crooning, but it's still the same
And it means death.
Are there no other voices? None at all?
No voice at all out of the long parade
That marched so many years,
Out of the passion of the Puritans,
The creaking of the wagons going west,
The guns of Sharpsburg, the unnumbered dead,
Out of the baffled and bewildered hosts
Who came here for a freedom hardly known,
Rebel and exile, bondservant and outcast.
Out of the bowels of the immigrant ship,
The strange, sick voyage, the cheating and the scorn
And yet, at the end, Liberty.
Liberty with a torch in her right hand,
Whoever cheated and whoever lied,
Liberty for my children, Liberty
Slowly worked out, deceived a thousand times,
But never quite forgotten, always growing,
Growing like wheat and corn.
" I remember a man named Abe Lincoln.
I remember the words he used to say. "
Oh, we can call on Lincoln and Tom Paine,
Adams and Jefferson.
Call on the great words spoken that remain
Like the great stars of evening, the fixed stars,
But that is not enough.
The dead are mighty and are part of us
And yet the dead are dead. This is our world,
Our time, our choice, our anguish, our decision.
This is our world. We have to make it now,
A hundred and thirty millions of us have to
And make it well, or suffer the bad dream.
What have we got to say?

A WOMAN'S VOICE:

I don't know. I'm a woman with a house.
I do my work. I take care of my man.
I've got a right to say how things should be.
I've got a right to have my kids grow up
The way they ought to grow. Don't stop me there.
Don't tread on me, don't hinder me, don't cross me.
I made my kids myself. I haven't got
Big words to tell about them.
But, if you ask about democracy,
Democracy's the growing and the bearing,
Mouth at the breast and child still to be born.
Democracy is kids and the green grass.

NARRATOR:

What have we got to say,
People, you people?

MAN'S VOICE:

I guess I haven't thought about it much.
I been too busy. Way I figure it
It's this way. We've got something. If it's crummy
The bunch of us can change what we don't like
In our own way and mean it.
I got a cousin back in the old country.
He says it's swell there but he couldn't change
A button on his pants without an order
From somebody's pet horse. Maybe he likes it.
I'm sticking here. That's all. Well, sign me off.

NARRATOR:

People, you people, living everywhere,
Sioux Falls and Saugatuck and Texarkana,
Memphis and Goshen, Harrodsburg and Troy,
People who live at postmarks with queer names,
Blue Eye and Rawhide, Santa Claus and Troublesome,
People by rivers, people of the plains,
People whose contour-plows bring back the grass
To a dust-bitten and dishonored earth,
And those who farm the hillside acres still
And raise up fortitude between the stones,
Millions in cities, millions in the towns,
People who spit a mile from their front doors
And gangling kids, ballplaying in the street,
All races and all stocks, all creeds and cries,
And yet one people, one, and always striving. . . .

A MAN:

I'm on relief.
I know what they say about us on relief,
Those who never were there.
All the same, we made the park.
We made the road and the check-dam and the culvert.
Our names are not on the tablets. Forget our names.



But, when you drive on the road, remember us, also.
Remember Johnny Lombardo and his pick,
Remember us, when you build democracy,
For we, too, were part and are part.

NARRATOR:

One nation, one.
And the voices of young and old, of all who have faith,
Jostling and mingling, speaking from the ground,
Speaking from the old houses and the pride,
Speaking from the deep hollows of the heart.

MAN'S VOICE:

I was born in '63.
There were many then who despaired of the Republic,
Many fine and solid citizens.
They had good and plausible reasons and were eloquent.
I grew up in the Age of Brass, the Age of Steel.
I have known and heard of three wars.
All through my life, whenever the skies were dark,
There came to me many fine and solid citizens,
Wringing their hands, despairing of the Republic,
Because of an income tax or a depression,
Because their party had lost the last election,
Because we couldn't do this and shouldn't do that.
And yet, each time, I saw the Republic grow
Like a great elm tree, through each fault and failure,
The stubborn rock, the parched soil,
And spread its branches over all the people.
Look at the morning sun. There is the Republic.
Not yesterday, but there, the breaking day.

TOTALITARIAN VOICE:

But, my worthy American listeners,
All this is degenerate talk.
The future rolls like a wave and you cannot fight it.

A VOICE:

Who says we can't?

A VOICE:

Who says so?

A VOICE:

What's his racket?

A VOICE:

How does he get that way?

A VOICE:

You mean to tell me
A little shrimp like that could run the world,
A guy with a trick moustache and a bum salute
Run us, run you and me?

TOTALITARIAN VOICE:

You mistake me.
Others have often made the same mistake
Often and often and in many countries.
I never play upon a people's strength.
I play upon their weaknesses and fears.
I make their doubts my allies and my spies.
I have a most convincing mask of peace
Painted by experts, for one kind of sucker,
And for another — I'm a business man,
Straight from the shoulder, talking trade and markets
And much misunderstood.
I touch this man upon his pocketbook,
That man upon his hatred for his boss,
That man upon his fear.
I offer everything, for offering's cheap.
I make no claims until I make the claims.
I'm always satisfied until I'm not
Which happens rather rapidly to those
Who think I could be satisfied with less
Than a dismembered and digested world.
My secret weapon is no secret weapon.
It is to turn all men against all men
For my own purposes. It is to use
Good men to do my work without their knowledge,
Not only the secret traitor and the spy.
It is to raise a question and a doubt
Where there was faith. It is to subjugate
Men's minds before their bodies feel the steel.
It is to use
All envy, all despair, all prejudice
For my own work.
If you've an envy or a prejudice
A nicely grown, well-rounded piece of hate,
I'll play on it and use it to your ruin.
My generals are General Distrust,
General Fear, General Half-A-Heart,
General It's-Too-Late,
General Greed and Major-General Hate,
And they go walking in civilian clothes
In your own streets and whisper in your ears.
I won't be beaten just by sitting tight.
They tried that out in France. I won't be beaten
By hiding in the dark and making faces,
And certainly I never will be beaten
By those who rather like my kind of world,
Or, if not like it, think that it must come,
Those who have wings and burrow in the ground.
For I'm not betting only on the tanks,
The guns, the planes, the bombers,
But on your own division and disunion.
On your own minds and hearts to let me in,
For, if that happens, all I wish for happens.
So what have you to say?
What have you got to bet against my bet?
Where's your one voice?

AMERICAN VOICE:

Our voice is not one voice but many voices.
Not one man's, not the greatest, but the people's.
The blue sky and the forty-eight States of the people.
Many in easy times but one in the pinch
And that's what some folks forget.
Our voice is all the objectors and dissenters
And they sink and are lost in the groundswell of the people,
Once the people rouse, once the people wake and listen.
People, you people, growing everywhere,
What have you got to say?
There's a smart boy here with a question and he wants answers.
What have you got to say?

A VOICE:

We are the people. Listen to us now.

A VOICE:

Says you we're puny? We built Boulder Dam,
We built Grand Coulee and the T. V. A.
We built them out of freedom and our sweat.

VOICE:

Says you we're faint of heart and little of mind?
We poured like wheat through the gaps of the Appalachians.
We made the seas of wheat, the seas of corn.
We made five States a sea of wheat and corn.

VOICE, LAUGHING:

We built the cities and the skyscrapers,
All the proud steel. We built them up so high
The eagles lost their way.

VOICE:

That's us. When did you do a job like that?

VOICE:

Wasn't enough.

VOICE:

No, and you bet it wasn't.
Not with the apple-sellers in the streets,
Not with the empty shops, the hungry men.

VOICE:

But we learned some things in that darkness and kept free.
We didn't fold up and yell for a dictator.
We built, even in the darkness. We learned our trade
By the licks we took and we're building different now.

VOICE:

We lost our way for a while but we've found our way.
We know it and we'll hold it and we'll keep it.
We'll tell it to the world. We're saying it.

VOICE:

Freedom to speak and pray.

VOICE:

Freedom from want and fear.

VOICE:

That's what we're building.

VOICE:

Now and here and now.

VOICE:

Forever and forever and forever.

NARRATOR:

People, you people, risen and awake. . . .

VOICE:

That's what we're building and we'll build it here.
That's what we're building and we'll build it now,
Build it and make it shine across the world,
A refuge and a fortress and a hope,
Breaking old chains and laughing in the sun.
This is the people's cause, the people's might.
We have set up a standard for the free
And it shall not go down.
That's why we drill the plate and turn the wheel,
Build the big planes.
That's why a million and a half of us
Learn here and now how free men stand in arms.
Don't tread on us, don't hinder us, don't cross us.
We won't have tyranny here.

VOICE:

We don't give one long low hoot for your master race.
We think your slick new order's a bowl of raspberries.



We'll pick the small and the free and the enduring,
Wherever we find them and wherever they are.
We won't have tyranny here.

VOICE:

We'll stick by Rosie Shapiro and Dan Shay,
Paul Bunchick and the Greek who runs the Greek's,
And all of 'em like that, wherever they are.
We'll stick by the worn old stones in Salem churchyard,
The Jamestown church and the bones of the Alamo.
We won't have tyranny here.

VOICE:

It's a long way out of the past and a long way forward.
It's a tough way, too, and there's plenty of trouble in it.
It's a black storm crowding the sky and a cold wind blowing,
Blowing upon us all.
See it and face it. That's the way it is.
That's the way it'll be for a time and a time.
Even the easy may have little ease.
Even the meek may suffer in their meekness.
But we've ridden out storms before and we'll ride out this one,
Ride it out and get through.
It won't be done by the greedy and the go-easies.
The stuffed shirts, the " yes but " men and the handsome phonies,
The men who want to live in their father's pockets,
The folks who barely believe and the bitter few.
It'll be done by the river of the people,
The mountain of the people, the great plain
Grown to the wheat of the people,
Plowed by their suffering, harrowed by their hope,
Tall with their endless future.
It'll be done by the proud walker, Democracy,
The walker in proud shoes.
Get on your feet, Americans, and say it!
Forget your grievances, wherever you are,
The little yesterday's hates and the last year's discord.
This is your land, this is your independence,
This is the people's cause, the people's might.
Say it and speak it loud, United, free. . .

MANY VOICES:

United, free.

VOICE:

Whatever happens and whatever falls.
We pledge ourselves to liberty and faith.

MANY VOICES:

To liberty and faith.

VOICE:

We pledge ourselves to justice, law and hope
And a free government by our own men
For us, our children and our children's children.

MANY VOICES:

For us, our children and our children's children.

VOICE:

Not for an old dead world but a new world rising.

VOICE:

For the toil, the struggle, the hope and the great goal.

( MUSIC UP AND DOWN )

NARRATOR:

You've heard the long parade
And all the voices that cry out against it,
Some of our own, and one that's not our own
And never will be while we're still the people.

(Quietly)

What do the people say?
Well, you've just heard some questions and some answers,
Not all, of course. No man can say that's all.
A man's a humbug if he says that's all.
But look in your own minds and memories
And find out what you find and what you'd keep.
It's time we did that and it won't be earlier.
I don't know what each one of you will find,
What memory, what token, what tradition,
It may be only half a dozen words
Carved on a stone, carved deeper in the heart,
It might be all a life, but look and find it —
Sun on Key West, snow on New Hampshire hills,
Warm rain on Georgia and the Texas wind
Blowing across an empire and all part,
All one, all indivisible and one —
Find it and keep it and hold on to it,
For there's a buried thing in all of us,
Deeper than all the noise of the parade,
The thing the haters never understand
And never will, the habit of the free.

Out of the flesh, out of the minds and hearts
Of thousand upon thousand common men,
Cranks, martyrs, starry-eyed enthusiasts
Slow-spoken neighbors, hard to push around,
Women whose hands were gentle with their kids
And men with a cold passion for mere justice.
We made this thing, this dream.
This land unsatisfied by little ways,
Open to every man who brought good will,
This peaceless vision, groping for the stars,
Not as a huge devouring machine
Rolling and clanking with remorseless force
Over submitted bodies and the dead
But as live earth where anything could grow,
Your crankiness, my notions and his dream,
Grow and be looked at, grow and live or die.
But get their chance of growing and the sun.
We made it and we make it and it's ours.
We shall maintain it. It shall be sustained.

ALL VOICES UP:

WE SHALL MAINTAIN IT. IT SHALL BE SUSTAINED.