They say we won the war, O father.
They say ye fought like a lion.
Their copper faces glimmer with pride
As their words froth out in praise of ye.
The sun is peeping up from the dungeons of night,
The sky lies crimson cold, the river flows tranquil.
I look at ye lying here in eternal peace,
As peaceful as the misty morn
A wind pipes through the leaves its mournful notes
But my ears catch a ballad too.
O father, you must have been so brave up there,
Brave enough to think of us and not pity yourself.
The throngs here, they see a hero wreathed,
And I here see ye, O father as you are,
My father, nothing more, for nothing more can it be.
And while I stand here, all memories well up in my heart.
The day has grown, the dark shadows have dwarfed,
But your shadow will ever lie upon my thoughts.
The bygone days, they cascade back,
Those pony-back games, the sweet lullabies,
The tender love you gave me, O father mine,
That love still remains in my heart, forever unreturned.
These folks shall leave, extolling expended,
Pride in their eyes, grief in their voices, ephemeral.
But I shall come here, to sit here and share those bygone moments
To feel your loneliness, as you felt upon those snow-clad hills
To feel you thinking about Mother and me in those final seconds.
To feel the final glow on your face, like that of a newborn.
‘A martyr rests hither’, announces the sombre epitaph,
Your name shall lie etched on the brown walls of some monument.
But all I feel now is your absence, the vacant chair at home,
The un-slept bed, the clothes unworn, the boots on the shoe-rack.
But I’ll find you somewhere, somewhere in my now-broken heart,
Forever you’ll be etched on its walls, ne’er to fade out, ne’er to leave.
DoubleSpeak 