Peter Hammill: Forsaken Gardens

Where are all the joys of yesterday?
Where, now, is the happiness and laughter that we shared?
Gone, like our childhood dreams, aspirations and beliefs;
time is a thief, and he ravages our gardens,
stripping saplings, felling trees,
trampling on our flowers, sucking sap and drying seeds.
In the midnight candle-light of experience
all colour fades, green fingers grey.

Time, alone, shall murder all the flowers,
still, there's time to share our plots and all that we call 'ours'.
How much worse, then, if we all deny each others' needs
and keep our gardens privately?

Its getting colder, wind and rain leave gashes;
looking back, I only see the friends I've lost.
Fires smoulder, raking through the ashes
my hands are dirty, my mind is numb,
I count the cost of 'I':
"I need to get on, I've got to tend my garden;
got to shut you out, no time to crave your pardon now".

Now I see the garden that I've grown is
just the same as those outside;
the fences that, erected to protect, simply divide....
There's ruination everywhere,
the weather has played havoc with the grass...
does anyone believe his garden's really going to last?
In the time allotted us, can any man keep miserly his own?
Is there any pleasure in a solitary growth?

Come and see my garden if you will,
I'd like someone to see it all before each root is killed.
Surely now its time to open up each life to all,
tear down the walls, if it's not too late!

There is so much sorrow in the world,
there is so much emptiness and heartbreak and pain.
Somewhere on the road we have all taken a wrong turn...
how can we build the right path again?

Through the grief, through the pain,
our flowers need each other'srain....