Youtube lyrics, 2016-04-29, Only a Pawn in Their Game

"Only A Pawn In Their Game" by Bob Dylan, 1963

Somehow this song, 53 years old, seems apropos for the current state of the world and especially the United States. Dylan's cry for true understanding has never been needed more than today with the polarization of the populace, the demonization of whole ethnic groups and social classes and condemnation of groups whose orientation do not fit the standards of the majority. His eulogy for Medgar Evers focuses not on the martyred man's attempt to desegregate the South, but on the unknown assailant who had been led to that point by self-aggrandizing and corrupt political and social leaders. Dylan casts such a light on this problem that it becomes a call to open discourse with those we might think of as the enemy rather than fellow victims.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY2lQV3ADfc#t=100.2345
Bob Dylan performs "Only A Pawn In Their Game" at March on Washington, Aug. 28, 1963

A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers' blood
A finger fired the trigger to his name
A handle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man's brain
But he can't be blamed
He's only a pawn in their game.

A South politician preaches to the poor white man
"You got more than blacks, don't complain
You're better than them, you been born with white skin" they explain
And the Negro's name
Is used it is plain
For the politician's gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid
And the marshals and cops get the same
But the poor white man's used in the hands of them all like a tool
He's taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
'Bout the shape that he's in
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

From the poverty shacks, he looks from the cracks to the tracks
And the hoof beats pound in his brain
And he's taught how to walk in a pack
Shoot in the back
With his fist in a clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide 'neath the hood
To kill with no pain
Like a dog on a chain
He ain't got no name
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

Today, Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught
They lowered him down as a king
But when the shadowy sun sets on the one
That fired the gun
He'll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain:
Only a pawn in their game.

There is so much more to history and not all can be said in a song yet the song manages to capture the heart of the truth!

aren't we all a pawn in someone's game??

Aw Bob Dylan
Poet Laureate of the Rock Era

2016 Nobel Prize in Literature winner
There is something eerily real about him.
Something almost anti "celebrity" which
is the highest praise I give to someone
whose name is known. (Even if it is their
pen name)

Says the woman whose song with her child
is "To make you feel my love."
Bob Dylan

True story, I read some pseudo intellectual,
some faux can't for the life of me remember
who it was say, something like
Bob Dylan can't sing....
Funny thing is, we know Mr. Dylans name, his work
and that other person will not be remembered.

Anyone that has that insight, that direction to see
where and who we are and project it forward
or back to where we were in space and time
or where we are headed,
knows something the rest of us don't.

I raise my glass to Mr. Dylan.