For Young -A Survivor From Flankers -

We did not then believe our lives were written in the sun And mapped no circle of the stars Or even the moments brightness when the meteors run We only saw the land filled with scars: Time and vanished youth like the fairy that took our tooth Whimpering we come, but out going is so resolute Little footpaths instead of decent roads, Tracks that led to outcrop barren rocks Children stumbling with bucket loads Of water, barefooted, vulture in flocks Time and vanished youth like the fairy that took our tooth Whimpering we come, but out going is so resolute Always circling eyes' blue waste of sky And little shrubs that sauntered to die In the frenzied dust disturbed by wind And upon your face that knowing grin Time and vanished youth like the fairy that took our tooth Whimpering we come, but out going is so resolute We saw but did not understand. You saw destiny clear As Joseph's dream, without sermons Of Providence that he had, and rose up from the drear And barren place, carrying visions Time and vanished youth like the fairy that took our tooth Whimpering we come, but out going is so resolute Of self and inner strength to escape The squalid pallor that gnawed our youth Surrounded by the swamps of that landscape This is the resilience in you that I salute Time and vanished youth like the fairy that took our tooth Whimpering we come, but out going is so resolute Yet sometimes I wished you'd return To talk about it, to tell us how it's done For many there still in stupor yearn To escape the shriveling of the sun.