To the kids of 1990

I look back upon my shattered dreams
I look back upon my lonely screams
My first life is over
My second just begun
As I understood so long ago
How bright it all was so long ago
And time, flowing memory of silence
Remembers
I did not understand
And will never understand all
But there is this, a remnant of the running man.
Decay, every present ever living
A living thing but not quite giving
Alway taking always breaking
The bonds of the people we meet
We remember lentils, boys, stars, broken hair and pigtailed politics
You see no food, broken boys, stars, bones and near necrosity
Our laughter, their folly
And the youth see only hope
But we few, we lucky few, we see the truth
As only our blind eyes can see the truth
(For others see through prisms, we dispair)
And Tiresias, Oedipus of the scrum
Narcissus of the number eight
Has no hope
Only future glory
The past has gone
But we few see the past has not
We few see the past was better
And no binary room of vats
Can steal our thought as yet.

And to the kids of 1990, we are too few, they are too mighty
But this.

When you were three, we were thee
Things will never be the same again
Things will never be better.

(31 December 1989)