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Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Carelessly Tattered

This is a song I wrote for a couple of friends.  One fellow happens to be in town as a refugee… in his home country they chopped his hands off and killed his family.  The other fellow is a Canadian guy who went to Bosnia as a Canadian Peacekeeper in the 90s and has never been the same since.  That Saddam execution thing really got me going, I guess.  Yes, in Canada we have casualties, too.

So in the end,
What is there left
But someone standing there, bereft,
Of hands, of mothers
Things that mattered
Carefully made and
Carelessly tattered?

And we who stay
Can only glimpse
Our luck to be alive
The ones who make it home
Come home;
We wait ‘til they arrive.

We wait ‘til they arrive, and then
They sometimes never do
The sights they’ve seen—
The slates won’t clean ...
They can’t come back
To you.

So in the end,
What is there left
But someone standing there, bereft
Of hands, of mothers
Things that mattered
Carefully made
And carelessly tattered?