Hunger & Thirst

Hunger & Thirst
by Michael Mark, Stephen Chapin & Tom Chapin
© 1994 HCD Music & The Last Music Co. (ASCAP)

Down on 9th Avenue cold hungry men
Stand in the soup line to be fed yet again.
I hurry the children,
Afraid that they'll stare,
But the kids hardly notice
For the line's always there.
It's there in the papers, it's there on TV,
The half-vacant eyes staring hopeless at me.
A hot wind blows over the African sky
And they tell us the children
Are the first ones to die.
Hunger and thirst, two things I hate.
Everyone living needs food on their plate.
Some things can hurt, these hurt the worst.
Nothing hurts harder than hunger and thirst.

My friend Maxine helps out two nights a week
Serving the hungry on Sullivan Street.
I talked to a man there,
The message was clear;
Last month he was working
And now he is here.
It crosses all borders, it speaks in all tongues.
It takes us all prisoner, the old and the young.
It's not just Somalia, Nepal and Bombay,
But Boston and Houston and Flint and L.A.
Hunger and thirst, two things I hate.
Everyone living needs food on their plate.
Some things can hurt, these hurt the worst.
Nothing hurts harder than hunger and thirst.

Share the world.
Call the hungry to come to the table
To heal and mend and
Harvest the end of hunger and thirst.

My brother the dreamer set out to defend
The powerless poor and to bring to an end
The horror of hunger that shackles us still
Now he'll never see it, but maybe we will.
It's as simple as breaking a loaf of new bread
And sharing with someone who needs to be fed.
It's as painful as changing the whole Human Race
For it holds the whole world in its mindless embrace
And a world that is hungry is a desperate place.
Hunger and thirst, two things I hate.
Everyone living needs food on their plate.
Some things can hurt, these hurt the worst.
Nothing hurts harder than hunger and thirst.

Share the world.
Call the hungry to come to the table
To heal and mend and
Harvest the end of hunger and thirst.

This song appears on Tom Chapin's So Nice To Come Home CD.

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