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National Poetry Month was launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996. For the rest of April, each day we will publish a poem: your favorite poem--one of your own or one by a published author.
Send your poem to janeEstahl@comcast.net with a sentence or two about yourself as the author or why the poem is among your favorites. And stay tuned for announcements of local poetry readings in the area that you may wish to attend to celebrate the integral role poets play in our culture.
On the Turning Away
~ Album: A Momentary Lapse of Reason
Lyrics by David Gilmour and Anthony Moore
Music by David GilmourWiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Turning_Away#:~:text=The%20song%20has%20often%20been,and%20%22Learning%20to%20Fly%22.
From the pale and downtrodden
And the words they say
Which we won't understand
Don't accept that what's happening
Is just a case of others' suffering
Or you'll find that you're joining in
The turning away
It's a sin that somehow
Light is changing to shadow
And casting its shroud
Over all we have known
Unaware how the ranks have grown
Driven on by a heart of stone
We could find that we're all alone
In the dream of the proud
On the wings of the night
As the daytime is stirring
Where the speechless unite in a silent accord
Using words, you will find, are strange
Mesmerized as they light the flame
Feel the new wind of change
On the wings of the night
No more turning away
From the weak and the weary
No more turning away
From the coldness inside
Just a world that we all must share
It's not enough just to stand and stare
Is it only a dream that there'll be
No more turning away?
Commentary by Ross (Yergz) Yerger*
"On the Turning Away" was brought to my attention due to my love of the band "Pink Floyd." Since college, the lyrics and guitar of David Gilmour are both equally poetic. This song strikes a chord for me because I see it as a follow up to the 1979 hit concept double album The Wall, which served as an autobiography to one of the band's two founders, Roger Waters, who felt that celebrity had separated him from his audience, from his fans, and that the record company built around him "a wall" to protect him, but also isolate him.
Now, with Roger out of the band on his own doing, David Gilmour writes that there's no more turning away. No more protection from The Wall, and in fact, jump down off the wall and lend a hand. "On the Turning Away" is regarded as one of Pink Floyd's most political pieces; and that's saying something for a band that performed the album The Wall on top of The Berlin Wall!
* Ross "Yergz" Yerger lives near Tampa, Florida, with his son, Zack, and their dogs, Matrix and Shady. Yergz is a retired Special Agent from the US Secret Service and is now the CEO of Mastiff Media, a radio show and podcast production company. He also hosts "Up The Middle," a show about "politics for the rest of us," available on, among other platforms and stations in syndication, Yergz Radio and at Yergz.com. For more information go to Yergz.com and to https://Yergz.Radio.
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