Si Kahn Lyrics
Courage
Washington Square
The next vignette places us on a New York city street corner, and we are there with him listening to a woman quietly telling the story of a NYC factory fire, and the immigrant workers trapped there. The indelible scars left on her by that day reflect back to us the scars of similar desperate situations, and visual images of days like 9/11, and we realize we are connected, through history and humanity, by our collective human anguish. Read the rest
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On the southeast corner of Greene Street and Waverly
On the east side of Washington Square
The street is still troubled, the sidewalk unsettled
Young voices still cry through the afternoon air
March 25th, 1911
This is the way she told it to me
A factory of immigrants, Jews and Italians
Are hard at their work when the fire breaks free
At the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
Women fall through the bitter spring air
Their young faces turn to question me
I still hear their voices as I walk in Washington Square
They rush to the doors, but the bosses have locked them
Lest someone step out for a breath of fresh air
Trapped in this wreckage they run to the windows
Stare ten stories down to the street lying there
They stand on the ledges, the fire behind them
The wide air before them, they jump holding hands
They cry out in Yiddish, cry out in Italian
And plunge to the street where my own mother stands
Thirty years later, she still can't believe it
She cries through her story, I sit at her feet
One hundred twenty three immigrant women
Twenty three men lie dead on the street
This is our history, this moment that shapes us
My mother falls silent, tears frame her cheeks
She could never forget, I will always remember
It could have been her, it still could be me
At the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
Women fall through the bitter spring air
Their young faces turn to question me
I still hear their voices as I walk in Washington Square
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