Two Artists Who Take 2 White Flags

Two Artists Who Take 2 White Flags

Two artists who take 2 white flags

On Brooklyn Bridge in our town

As if the Stars & Stripes were rags

Instead of them are taken down.

These artists are from Germany

And don’t love any flag unless

It’s lily-white, for white, you see,

Is for surrender under stress.

For being Germans as they are,

They tend to feel that were it not

For flags there wouldn’t be a war—

All flags stand for a Juggernaut. 

But I feel differently than that—

And, if not for the Stars & Stripes,

And something stirring to look at

Nobody’d face down Nazi types.

And that’s why flags are not to me

The rags that others fear to wave

Because that flag inspires me—

To see it wave to say, ‘Be brave!’

And therefore, it’s no accident,

That pacifists put up the white

Because white has to represent

That no one will put up a fight;

That, since nobody will oppose

An evil, say, red, green or black

Then they will bend over to foes

And facing evil—not fight back.

For those who drooling over ‘peace

And love’ & ‘touchy-feely stuff’

That think our mortal enemies

Are rough for our being tough,

They’d better get the value straight

For what our flag is waving for

That love of country’s not for hate,

And power may prevent a war;

Whilst all those pacifists I know

Expect somebody else to fight,

So that the war which they’d forgo

Is why the flag they wave is white.