Blowin’ in the Wind

(March for Peace at Arlington National Cemetery
on February 6, 1968, by John C. Goodwin, American
photographer; from left to right: unknown man,
Episcopal Rev. Roger Alling, Catholic Bishop James
Shannon, Lutheran Rev. Richard John Neuhaus in 2nd
row, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr., Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath
carrying the Torah, and Rabbi Everett Gendler)

Blowin’ in the Wind became an unofficial anthem in the Sixties. Bob Dylan composed it one night in April, 1962, after a long discussion about civil rights, when in his mind “an idea flashed — ‘your silence betrays you,’” Anthony Scaduto wrote in Bob Dylan, an intimate biography.

“If Dylan’s answer is vague, his questions are clear and sharp, and the song admirably fulfills Yeats’ definition of sincere poetry: ‘It must have the perfections that escape analysis, the subtleties that have a new meaning every day, and it must have all this whether it be but a little song made out of a moment of dreamy indolence, or some great epic made out of the dreams of one poet and of a hundred generations whose hands were never weary of the sword.’”

BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, ’n’ how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, ’n’ how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it’s washed to the sea?
Yes, ’n’ how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, ’n’ how many times can a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, ’n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, ’n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

~ Bob Dylan, born 1941, American singer and songwriter