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An allegory of the '60s |
Dear girl You must have seen my sort before In the winters of your youth We came begging at your father’s door. . . And were turned away, as I recall. He said: “Boy, what is your hair worth? Your shoes? Your clothes? Your brain? He said to me, “Son There is no man without the gun When you have tread the bloodied jungle Where the fire strips you bare Then, and only then, will you be welcomed here.” Those words were immortalised Chiseled on a plaque Built within the wall You see the place where we now stand. Look, You see the land stretching to the sky That folds, dusty and dead, around your eye. This place was ours, Made for us as we believed we were- Bohemia I wish you could have seen Bohemia in that first spring: The flower children blooming Laughing with the division bell Division was freedom Freedom to move in light and sound To pull life from the sky Raise it from the wells Hold it, crystalline, in your hands And swallow. Day by day The wells drained away The children wilted Laughter falling hollow (Darling do not mould yourself against. Where do you fit then, when released?) With the free spirits lying stoned Chained to dope and to the ground. But this was not the end at all There was another life for me back before the wall I smoked on concrete steps with other greasy men I learned the price of shoes and stone And skin and bone. And dreamed of the lost dream Of believing decay was not Contained in the beginning. I became grey, I kept score Picked diamonds from the night-time street This time this shadow was welcomed at your door. So now the sky is darkening stretching back to where we stand Across this ruined land- Our dried dream that folds That crumbled in our hands |