2025 Competition Entry:

We Stand Together by Stephen Greenberg

Genre

Folk

Co-writer(s)

no

Performer(s)

Stephen Greenberg: lead vocal, guitar
Nory Fussell: 1st harmony vocal, Irish bouzouki
Thom Moore: 2nd harmony vocal

Description

Like another of my entries, “A Trucemas Song,” this one was born in a dream. In 2017 my wife and I spent weeks working on our own Passover Haggadah, with a solidarity and no-borders theme — beginning with an excerpt from Aurora Levins Morales’s poem “Red Sea” (“This time it’s all of us or none”). One morning I awoke with this song in my head: the melody, the unusual structure, and the first line, “We stand together on the edge of time.” A year later I finally got around to finishing it.

Bio

Stephen Greenberg has been writing songs for 57 years — mostly in the closet, in the sense of never having a band or making a proper record. He was born in San Francisco and lived in the Bay Area, Santa Cruz (California), Germany, Italy, and Greece, before moving to the Sierra Nevada foothills in 1991. Married, two children, one grandchild, lots and lots of dogs. Mostly retired from work as an indigent criminal appellate defense attorney; before that, college lecturer.

Lyrics

We stand together on the edge of time
the only way to move is forward
but only if no one is left behind
and only when there are no borders

We walk together on the edge of space
the only way to go is onward
but only once we’ve seen each other’s face
looked into our eyes, listened to our sighs
that’s when together we can wander

We dance together on the edge of peace
the only road to our survival
‘cause only when we’ve cured the war disease
melted all the guns for our daughters and our sons
cast off all the weight from the centuries of hate
we’ll all be allies and not rivals

We sing together on the edge of liberty
when all the shackles must be shattered
‘cause only when no one is left in misery
not locked inside a cage, so there’s no more need to rage
not turned into a slave, so there’s nothing more to crave
not defined as wrong, so we’re free to sing along
‘cause everybody truly matters.

We stand together on the edge of time
the only way to move is forward
but only if no one is left behind
and only when there are no borders

We stand together on the edge of time
The only way to move is forward
But only if no one is left behind
And only when there are no borders.
But only if no one is left behind
And only when there are no borders.

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