Let Us Begin (What Are We Making Weapons For)

(album: One World - 1986)

I am the son of a grassland farmer, western Oklahoma, nineteen forty-three.
I always felt grateful to live in the land of the free.
I gave up my father to South Korea, the mind of my brother to Vietnam,
now there's a banker who says I must give up my land.
There are four generations of blood in this topsoil, four generations of love on this farm.
Before I give up, I would gladly give up my right arm.

What are we making weapons for? Why keep on feeding the war machine?
We take it right out of the mouths of our babies, take it away from the hands of the poor,
tell me, what are we making weapons for?

I had a son and my son was a soldier, he was so like my father, he was so much like me.
To be a good comrade was the best that he dreamed he could be.
He gave up his future to revolution, his life to a battle that just can't be won.
For this is not living, to live at the point of a gun.
I remember the nine hundred days of Leningrad, The sound of the dying, the cut of the cold,
I remember the moments, I prayed I would never grow old.

What are we making weapons for? Why keep on feeding the war machine?
We take it right out of the mouths of our babies, take it away from the hands of the poor,
tell me, what are we making weapons for?

For the first time in my life I feel like a prisoner, a slave to the ways of the powers that be.
And I fear for my children, as I fear for the future I see.
Tell me how can it be we're still fighting each other? What does it take for a people to learn?
If our song is not sung as a chorus, we surely will burn.

What are we making weapons for? Why keep on feeding the war machine?
We take it right out of the mouths of our babies, take it away from the hands of the poor,
tell me, what are we making weapons for?

Have we all forgotten all the lives that we are given,
all the vows that were taken, saying never again,
Now for the first time, this could be the last time. If peace is our vision, let us begin.

Have we all forgotten all the lives that we are given,
all the vows that were taken, saying never again,
Now for the first time, this could be the last time. If peace is our vision, let us begin,
let us begin.