From Life to No Man’s Land

I see you on that old coastal path,
when the tide of our young day was new,
before the world turned sour,
before they stole our hours,
before millions cowered
and surrendered hope for certainty.

When mystery flooded our souls
and our hearts were woven in human joys.
A vast unmeasured sea
spread out before us like God’s retina uncharted.

I curse these memory mountains
I have to climb just to find
that love where we were loved.
Doomed to write poetry and write songs,
that goes straight
overhead of meaning to anyone but me,
and, into the laughing
grotesque throats
of the musically naïve.

When did you first sell out my friend,
what dark seducing demon creature
convinced you to believe them?

Even their music
is cloned to death
by the teeth of greed
and eternally hooked
to some crippled giant
from the nineteen sixties.

We the true soldiers
of peace and love
must now give way
to this mysterious
glass world.

That clear light that shone
from St Ives bay to London streets
is now gone
to a place of sanctuary,

one day
a child of purer eyes than mine
will find it,
and our ghosts will sparkle
in some eternal mind.

Until that tomorrow becomes yesterday,
we will stumble into No Mans Land
and hope for, “A Body of England’s breathing,”
a passion dale forest that will forever
allow Passchendaele, to rest in peace.

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