The Devil at Woodstock

By Daniel Leach

Featured in New Lyre Winter 2022

I was a mere sixteen that Summer day
We all piled in a beat-up car and drove
To Woodstock, or someplace we had been told
That a great spectacle was to occur—
An earth-shaking event where all the stars
That lit a generation’s sky would be
Together, like an astronomical
Alignment—all their energies would merge,
And give voice to the coming brighter dawn
We all felt was awakening in those times—
A spirit free of all the bitter strife
Our parents’ lives had known, and free of all
The forms of tyranny; the little rows
Of doll-houses in suburbs, where the chains
Of smug conformity, in silence grow,
And rigid, time-encrusted old beliefs,
That led the world in mad pursuit of power
To war and to the very brink of doom;
Again sat mute as merchants of that trade
Enslaved the beautiful Promethean fire
Of Reason to their grim and violent ends—
Yes, even as we blithely breathed the air
Of Summer’s freedom in those sunny fields,
Across the world, in steamy jungle hells,
Our brothers bled and…