The ghosts are so near tonight, floating like unanswered prayers in the cold blue-white light over Manhattan. Parents, children, lovers, best friends, all wondering what the hell happened under that achingly beautiful blue sky.
And the glass has long since shattered, and the steel has long since bent in the heat. And their blood has long since soaked into the merciful sand, and their souls have been taken back home.
Please Lord keep me from remembering that morning. It's more than I can handle right now. Please take my memories and give them life everlasting. They deserve so much more than I can ever offer them.
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The Green Fields of France
Well, how do you do, Private William McBride,
Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
And rest for awhile in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone you were only 19
When you joined the great falling in 1916,
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?
Did they Beat the drum slowly, did the play the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fir o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?
Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you forever 19?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?
The sun's shining down on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plow;
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard it's still No Man's Land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man.
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.
And I can't help but wonder, now Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they sold you "The Cause?"
Did you really believe that this war would end war?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the pain
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.
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