Our party

If we threw a party and the whole world was there
Who’d bring the drinks? And what would you wear?
And what would the soundtrack to this party be?
Cos I’d ask the DJ for some Bob Marley.

One love, one heart –
Would we sit together, or would we sit apart?
Would bodyguards stop me and you from conversing?
Could we mingle freely, no soldiers dispersing?

Would there be enough chairs? Or would some of us stand?
Would poor folks be eating at your table grand?
Would there be fences round different cliques?
Would riff-raff be here, and there VIPs?

Would we all get fed, or would some be deprived?
You drool and go hungry, while my third course arrives;
Would you spill the wine and splash out with the water,
While you beg for one cup, for one drop, for your daughter?

And could you sit there at this party and see
Some treated so well, so elegantly,
While others were kicked, and laughed at and scorned
By the very same waiters you beckoned and called?

This is one world, one life, one party
But apartheid and poverty part us, you see.
But I know in my heart, if I were the host,
I’d want everyone there, to share and to toast.

I’d build a campfire for the world to sit round –
Seven billion people would make such a sound!
With our voices and flutes and our drums and guitars,
We’d wake up the universe; shake up the stars!

We’d bring odds and ends and make decorations,
People helping and talking cross all generations
And races and colours and cultures and creeds;
And I think there we’d find what our souls truly need.

When you and another agree not to fight
In your hearts you’re both writing each other’s invite,
‘Cos the party won’t start by changing their minds,
It’s in how I treat you that we change mankind.

Lyndi Smith, April 2011

Listen to mp3 version of me reading Our Party