Winters Deep

[Guest guest]

Home, home, I cry for you

There is my village, and people blue

Across the mountains, and seas of cold

To mothers arms, in days of old

 

To sit with brothers, not forgotten

Away from America, spoiled rotten

To kneel at the graves, of brave ones dead

To keep their ashes ever on my head

 

To open the top of Newgrange,

Like it used to be when I was there engaged

In teaching Romans how to be humble

And that fat priest, to stop his bumble

 

When you are here, not of your choice

A slave to famine with dieing voice

Mother, father, fought Japan and Hitler

This countries used up this Irish fiddler

 

You can heap Hindu teachings on my head

Transcendent meditations to take to bed

Despite color poster of Krishna on wall

Without my village I¹m dead to you all

 

I grew up long ago with tons of siblings

Happy go lucky, shared bedrooms and cribbings

Then off to big college, then big cult and wife

Then on to raise kids, work, normal life

 

But now in their absence, all of them dear

In a little apartment with no family near

No village, no country, no Celt music here

No village, no friends, a deepening fear

 

Alone, well OK, it¹s been done before

I¹m not the first soldier at this lonely door

Knocking, come in, says the dead man asleep

Welcome, you¹re home here, in cold Winters Deep

 

We sit, we stare, for ever long days

Day nor night matter, it¹s all one cold gray haze

We prepare, but for what?, we really don¹t know

The moss like our hair, longer doth grow

 

What once was so nice, now is long dead

Now memory ghosts haunt, ever run round our head

We cry for what was, the real beauty of old

Just trying to stay warm, not die of the cold

 

Absorbed in a hobby, at last we feel peace

But memories still pop up, bring us to our feet

With fast breath eyes wide, we reach for our blade

It¹s not there, it¹s not needed, they won the charade

 

I was, and I am, something no longer known

A memory, a history, an old carving on stone

The blue ghost you see when in forests you creep

Is my memory still living in cold Winters Deep

 

My village, the work, the friends, all the hugs

Long days of the work, long nights with our jugs

No judge there to judge us, no cop there to cop,

No tax man, no Bush, no Iraq war to stop

 

Thatch, wool and leather, firs and the grain

Working together, to keep out the rain

Tis all just enough, when you do have your kin

But they took it away, stripped us to the skin

 

How can the man go, to rob and to take

To rape all the village, put good man to stake

How can I go on, an innocent, with a brain

Remembering loved ones, pillaged then slain

 

The dead man arises, and tells me just how

He says in my mind with recollections made now

In hobbies bring back, in art make again

In cold Winters Deep, bring love to it¹s flame