Forgive us, Father, for we have sinned, It has been… we cannot count the years— since we knew what sin meant.
We mouth the words the nuns and priests once taught us, but the syllables taste foreign now, like prayers in a dead language we pretend to understand.
We have forgotten why we kneel, though still our knees recall the stone. We have lost the thread of what was broken, but feel the weight of something severed.
We built cathedrals out of doubt and filled them with our questions. We replaced altars with algorithms, confession with comment sections.
We are no longer sure You are listening— or if listening is something we invented to make the silence bearable, the vastness less vacant.
We have sinned—we think— though we are not sure against what. Against nature? Against each other? Against some half-remembered covenant, written in a script we can no longer read?
We recite the forms like actors who have forgotten their motivation, performing the ancient motions because they feel like muscle memory— like DNA calling us home to a house we are no longer certain exists.
Still we gather, still we whisper these inherited incantations, hoping they might still hold power, hoping the words might remember what we have forgotten.
O my God… we are… we think we are… sorry… for having… for having what? For having forgotten how to finish this prayer?
These ten poetic reflections revisit the protest anthems, lullabies, and cultural hymns that shaped a generation—songs we once sang in innocence, defiance, or hope. But time has sharpened their meanings, revealed their silences, and unsettled their assurances.
Songs I Thought I Understood is not a repudiation of the music, but a reckoning with what we missed—or could not yet see—in the melodies we inherited. Each piece responds to a specific song, not by rewriting it, but by listening anew with older ears and quieter questions.
Songs I Thought I Understood
A Requiem and Reflection in Ten Refrains
by Donald S. Yarab
“For the ones who heard the songs and still ask the questions.”
The Ten Refrains:
Puff Remembers (after “Puff the Magic Dragon”)
The Valley Below (after “One Tin Soldier”)
The Flowers Still Bloom (after “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”)
The Needle Lifts (after “This Land Is Your Land”)
The Submarine Below (after “Yellow Submarine”)
No One Was Saved (after “Eleanor Rigby”)
The Wind Still Blows (after “Blowin’ in the Wind”)
Can It Be (after “Let It Be”)
Neon Psalm (after “The Sound of Silence”)
We Have Not (after “We Shall Overcome”)
Puff Remembers
(after “Puff the Magic Dragon”)
Somewhere over the rainbow, Once upon a time, In a land not so far away— Yes, with dragons.
Puff—I remember him well. He sailed without maps, Carried no sword, Only stories.
But Little Jackie Paper— No, I never knew him. He came, they say, with sealing wax, With strings, with child-sized laughter.
And then he left. As children do. As they must.
Puff stayed behind, Watching the tide pull dreams from the sand, Waiting longer than most would, Believing perhaps too much.
Now I am older than Puff was then. The toys are gone. The books are shut. Even memory, sometimes, forgets its lines.
Still— Sometimes I think I hear the flap of canvas, The creak of rope, The rhythm of a boat That knows its way through time.
He may be out there yet— Not waiting, exactly, But still sailing, With room for one more story.
The Valley Below
(after “One Tin Soldier”)
I remember One Tin Soldier, The mountain people, the treasure buried deep, The message of peace— Unspoken, unread, Trampled by riders from the valley below.
As a child, I did not understand Why they came with swords To claim what was freely offered. I did not understand Why they could not wait, Why they did not read.
They were simply the People in the Valley Below.
But now—I know them. They live not far from here. They speak in votes and verdicts, In profits and justifications, In silence, and in slogans Worn smooth with use.
Some are kind, some mean well. Most are afraid. Many never climb.
And though the treasure still lies buried— That old dream of peace, The circle unbroken, The better world whispered in songs— I see fewer walking toward the mountain. Fewer still willing to wait.
The child I was weeps, Not for the dead soldier, But for the living who will never read The words beneath the stone.
The Flowers Still Bloom
(after “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”)
The flowers—I see them. They bloom each spring, In roadside ditches, In tended gardens, In places untouched by war Only by accident.
But where are they, Even now? Where are the promises they once held— The wreaths we laid, The songs we sang, The lessons we said we had learned?
Where are the girls who picked them, And the boys they gave them to, Before uniforms, Before funerals, Before forgetting?
They bloom still, Unconcerned. Nature does not mourn the fallen. It only covers them.
We placed our hope in petals And let them drift into the graves— Answers too proud Or too ashamed To be spoken.
Yes, I see the flowers. But I see them differently now. They are not peace. They are not memory. They are what grows when nothing else is left.
The Needle Lifts
(after “This Land Is Your Land”)
This land is your land, This land is mine— That is what the song said. And we sang it, Hand in hand, Before we knew Who drew the lines.
From California to the New York island— Yes, the rivers still run, The redwoods still rise, But whose boots Are turned away At the fence? Whose tent Stands just outside The melody?
I walked that ribbon of highway once. I saw the “No Trespassing” sign, Half-buried in dust. And behind it— Nothing but wind, And memory.
This land was made for you and me. But the deed was never signed. Or if it was, It has been lost Beneath centuries of ash and ink.
The voices fall quiet. The turntable slows. The needle lifts.
And still the land stretches, Unresolved. The chorus unreturned. The question unsung.
The Submarine Below
(after “Yellow Submarine”)
We all lived there, once— In the Yellow Submarine. Or so we sang.
A vessel of laughter, Of porthole dreams And choruses in perfect time.
We believed in it, In its bright hull, Its cartoon courage, Its watertight world Where everyone belonged And nothing intruded.
Unity, We thought, Could be painted in primary colors. Could float beneath the noise, And keep us safe.
But the world knocked. And the hull bent. And the sea Was not always blue.
Some never boarded. Some were told There was no room. Some were thrown overboard Before the song began.
Now I wonder— Was the submarine ever real? Or just a dream we made To keep the waters from us?
If it sails still, It does so With ghosts at the helm, And a quiet We mistook for peace.
No One Was Saved
(after “Eleanor Rigby”)
Eleanor gathered the rice like a rite— Not a wedding, But a funeral in disguise. No one noticed. No one asked Why she did it alone.
She lived in a world of quiet corners, Of teacups with dust, Of pews that creaked For no one in particular.
I did not see her then. Not really. She was background— A figure in a verse I sang without knowing.
And Father McKenzie— He wrote his sermons by candlelight, Even when no one came. He believed in the act, In the speaking itself, As if God were listening Even if the people were not.
I used to think They were odd. Sad, yes— But distant, Part of another time.
Now I see them in doorways, At bus stops, Scrolling through silence On glowing screens. I see them in myself, In the way I answer fewer calls, In the prayers I no longer finish.
All the lonely people— They are not elsewhere. They are not lost in some old song. They are here. And no one was saved.
The Wind Still Blows
(after “Blowin’ in the Wind”)
I remember when the answer Was blowing in the wind. We sang it as if that meant It was near, As if the breeze would carry it to us If we just opened our hands Or listened hard enough.
But I have stood in that wind now. Not once. Not in youthful chorus, But in silence.
And the answers do not ride so lightly.
How many roads? Too many to count. Too many lined with names Etched in metal, Or cardboard signs that ask Not for peace, But for spare change.
How many ears must one man have Before he hears the cry? Enough to wear out the listening. Enough to forget which voice was his.
The cannonballs still fly, Though we call them by different names now— Policy. Preemption. Profit. “Necessary force.”
Yes, the wind still blows. But the answers, If they are there, Have long since been scattered Across deserts, Across oceans, Across generations too tired To ask the questions anymore.
Can It Be
(after “Let It Be”)
When I find myself in times of silence, I do not hear The words of wisdom. I hear the ache of asking Whether silence is answer, Or simply absence.
Let it be, they said. And I tried. I tried to let the world Unfold as it would, To trust in the slow work of time.
But still the wars came. Still the towers fell. Still the hands reached out And found nothing waiting.
Mother Mary— She comes to some. But others Find no visitor In the night.
Let it be? Can it be? Is there something We have not yet asked, Some word not spoken Because we were told Not to speak at all?
There will be an answer— So the song promised. But I have learned That sometimes The answer is another question.
Neon Psalm
(after “The Sound of Silence”)
Hello darkness— It does not answer. It scrolls. It flashes.
We used to whisper to the void And hope it heard. Now we shout And hope it trends.
The prophets write in hashtags, Their sermons flickering Across shattered glass, Their congregations swiping And moving on.
No one walks the quiet streets, No one weeps in the back pew. The cathedral is a comment thread Lit by the glow Of the god we built To hear ourselves.
No one dared disturb The sound of silence— That was the line. But now it is all disturbance. The silence Is what we fear.
I remember when words Had gravity, When they settled in the chest And waited To be spoken with care.
Now even grief Is curated.
Still— Somewhere beneath the algorithms, Beneath the noise mistaken for voice, Beneath the sponsored silence, I believe the old language Waits.
Not to go viral. But to be heard.
We Have Not
(after “We Shall Overcome”)
We shall overcome— That is what we sang. We locked arms, Lit candles, Marched softly into nights Thick with dogs and doubt.
And some did overcome. Some bridges held. Some laws changed. Some doors opened.
But not all.
Not for everyone. Not everywhere. And not for long.
Some came after And tore down the signs, Or rewrote them in finer script. Some left the door ajar Just wide enough To say it had been opened.
I do not mock the song. I remember it. In the bones. In the breath held Before a verdict. In the quiet After a child is buried.
We shall overcome— We whispered it When shouting would not do.
But the road is longer Than the hymnbook said. And the hill steeper Than memory allows.
We have not. Not yet.
Still— There is something in the singing, Even now. Even if the words tremble. Even if the chorus Grows thin.
In myth, the Furies pursue the guilty. In this meditative poem, they do not chase or condemn, but pause—witnesses to memory, silence, and the uncertain balance between reckoning and reprieve. Beneath the yew, they wait—not gone, not appeased, but listening.
Vincent van Gogh, Trunk of an Old Yew Tree (1888) Oil on canvas, 91 × 71 cm London, Helly Nahmad Gallery
“Necdum illum aut trunca lustrauerat obuia taxo / Eumenis…” — Statius, Thebaid VIII. 9–10
“Nor yet had the Fury met him, bearing the lustral yew…” — Statius, Thebaid VIII. 9–10 (adapted translation)
As darkness descends and light abates, The Furies wake at the turning of fates. No horn is blown, no omen flies— Only the hush where judgment lies.
They come not crowned, but cloaked in ash, With broken names and eyes that flash. Not wrath alone, but what endures— The weight of memory that never cures.
They walk where silence used to sleep, Where secrets rot and letters bleed. The breath of dusk is cold and tight— A wound reopens in the night.
By yews they pause, where death takes root, In soil grown thick with ash and fruit. The bark is split with silent cries, The rings record what speech denies.
They do not speak, but still the trees Murmur of trespass in the breeze. The wind forgets its mournful tone— As if the world waits to atone.
A shadow stirs, but does not fall; A light withdraws, but leaves a call. No hand is raised, no doom is cast— And yet the pulse runs through the past.
The air is thick with what might be: A breaking, or a turning key. The Furies halt—but do not sleep. And from the yews, the silence… deep.
So still they stand beneath the yew— The Furies veiled in dusk’s soft hue. Its needles dark, its berries red, It shelters both the quick and dead.
They neither strike nor turn away, But hold the hush at break of day. Their eyes are dark, their purpose blurred— As if they wait to hear a word.
History shows that evil rarely marches under banners we immediately recognize. Too often, it comes draped in righteousness, purity, and fear. This piece is a lament for how easily we have been—and still can be—drawn into the machinery of cruelty.
My Friend, You Were There
My friend, When the Holy Catholic Church, seeking to preserve the Faith in all its radiant purity, instituted the Inquisition, you were there— not as a bystander, but as a willing voice.
You denounced the old widow, who lived alone with her cat. You whispered against the Jewish family— familiar, yet forever marked as other— and gave your assent to their undoing.
You crowded into the square to watch the trials. You sang hymns as the flames crowned their bodies with smoke. You wept tears of joy that the world was made purer that day.
My friend, When the ships came heavy with human cargo, and the auction blocks stained the soil, you were there.
You placed your bids. You weighed their flesh. You wrote the laws that chained their children.
You sang hymns on Sunday, and broke their backs on Monday. You called it providence. You called it order.
My friend, When the traders came with flags and rifles, when the rivers flowed with rubber and blood, you were there.
You signed the charters. You counted the profits. You sold the shackles and the scales.
You called it commerce. You called it destiny.
My friend, When the banners of the Reich unfurled, and the drums of destiny beat their hollow call, you were there.
You shouted with the crowds as glass shattered from shopfronts. You signed the letters, you cheered the laws, you raised your hand high in salute.
You bought the house, the shop, the art your neighbors were forced to leave behind.
You praised the strong hand that swept away the weak. You rejoiced as neighbors vanished, grateful that your streets were made clean.
My friend, When Stalin summoned the will of the people to root out the enemy within, you were there.
You reported the whispered doubts of your cousin, your friend, your brother.
You paraded with red flags while the trucks rumbled into the night. You filled the quotas. You seized the land. You counted the spoils as others disappeared.
You sang of the bright tomorrow as you cast your eyes down and stepped over the absent.
My friend, When Mao lifted the Little Red Book, and the children cried out against their fathers, you were there.
You led the chants. You scrawled denunciations across the walls. You struck the old professor who dared to hesitate. You cheered as the temples fell, and the old poems burned, convinced you were building a paradise on the bones of the past.
My friend, When Pol Pot promised that the fields would bloom with new life, you were there.
You marched the teachers into the paddies. You pointed the rifle. You praised the year zero that would erase the memory of all that came before.
You smiled as the world was reborn in silence.
My friend, When the generals rose in the name of order, when the prisons filled and the stadiums overflowed, you were there.
You nodded at the names. You counted the profits. You watched the blindfolded taken at night.
You called it security. You called it salvation.
My friend, You have always been there.
Only too late did you realize. Only too late did you doubt— but not much.
You fell silent, lest you betray your doubt. You looked away, lest you see.
You told yourself it would be different this time. You told yourself you had learned. But the signs are familiar. The words are familiar. The silence is familiar.
