top of page

Poems & Songs on Human Nature

desperate-2293377_1920.jpeg
PROFOUND POEMS TO REMIND US OF OUR SHARED HUMANITY IN TRYING TIMES
https://www.featherflint.com/2018/06/24/powerful-poems-about-humanity/

POEMS ABOUT LIVING AND HUMAN EXPERIENCE
https://poets.org/text/poems-about-living-and-human-experience

POEMS by PABLO NERUDA 

https://poets.org/poem/nothing-death.      

“United Fruit Co.,” Pablo Neruda (1950)

When the trumpet sounded
everything was prepared on earth,
and Jehovah gave the world
to Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, and other corporations.
The United Fruit Company
reserved for itself the most juicy
piece, the central coast of my world,
the delicate waist of America.

It rebaptized these countries
Banana Republics,
and over the sleeping dead,
over the unquiet heroes
who won greatness,
liberty, and banners,
it established an opera buffa:
it abolished free will,
gave out imperial crowns, encouraged envy, attracted
the dictatorship of flies:
Trujillo flies, Tachos flies
Carias flies, Martinez flies,
Ubico flies, flies sticky with
submissive blood and marmalade,
drunken flies that buzz over
the tombs of the people,
circus flies, wise flies
expert at tyranny.

With the bloodthirsty flies
came the Fruit Company,
amassed coffee and fruit
in ships which put to sea like
overloaded trays with the treasures
from our sunken lands.

Meanwhile the Indians fall
into the sugared depths of the
harbors and are buried in the
morning mists;
a corpse rolls, a thing without
name, a discarded number,
a bunch of rotten fruit
thrown on the garbage heap.

​

​

Probably the best song of the 20th century on the human condition--by the late John Prine

Holy Earth in Me, by David Williams

Human/Inhuman by David Williams--the "Asshole" problem in Human Nature

Trickster_LITHO_sm.jpeg

​

Chapter excerpt on "The Brain of Song" from David Williams' The Trickster Brain: Neuroscience, Evolution, & Narrative

​

​

​

​

Randy Newman on Fairness

bottom of page