Bohemia: A Fairy Tale

Dear girl
You must have seen my sort before
In the winters of your youth
We came begging at your father’s door. . .
And were turned away, as I recall.

He said: “Boy, what is your hair worth?
Your shoes? Your clothes? Your brain?
He said to me, “Son
There is no man without the gun
When you have tread the bloodied jungle
Where the fire strips you bare
Then, and only then, will you be welcomed here.”
Those words were immortalised
Chiseled on a plaque
Built within the wall

You see the place where we now stand.
Look,
You see the land stretching to the sky
That folds, dusty and dead, around your eye.
This place was ours,
Made for us as we believed we were-
Bohemia

I wish you could have seen
Bohemia in that first spring:
The flower children blooming
Laughing with the division bell
Division was freedom
Freedom to move in light and sound
To pull life from the sky
Raise it from the wells
Hold it, crystalline, in your hands
And swallow.

Day by day
The wells drained away
The children wilted
Laughter falling hollow
(Darling do not mould yourself against.
Where do you fit then, when released?)
With the free spirits lying stoned
Chained to dope and to the ground.

But this was not the end at all
There was another life for me back before the wall

I smoked on concrete steps with other greasy men
I learned the price of shoes and stone
And skin and bone.
And dreamed of the lost dream
Of  believing decay was not
Contained in the beginning.
I became grey, I kept score
Picked diamonds from the night-time street
This time this shadow was welcomed at your door.

So now the sky is darkening
stretching back to where we stand
Across this ruined land-
Our dried dream that folds
That crumbled in our hands