Gone, Gone, Is the country we loved

Gone, Gone, Is the country we loved,
Here time boils the rain,
And memories die with the wind,
When the dawn mist rises;
from the valley that kept our bones,
Peering through the haze,
their images stare, and their songs rise;
And in file they march -leader at the head,
and behind him comes his followers,
to the land we once held,
teeming with life in our dreams,
where pristine rivers run clear,
the grass and trees are all in bloom
the bees abuzz over their blooms,
while the birds drunk in songs sing,
through this world of perfection,
Mine are the elders walking passed in melancholy,
Through a land ours no more.

Sometimes when the evening comes,
and its anger eats the sun-light,
death distills over the water,
when in the shadow plays my imagination
creating the old homes -my people cherished
smoke from lit bonfires curl from their kraals
and in the rivers that roar,
I hear the yells of the mothers
and the laughter of the little children
As in the olden days -the good ole days;
Am I not going mad?

Again, and again and again I see shadows dark
and roars of our antique rivers,
When teardrops turn into icicles crystalline
mourning to moan -the good ole days gone.

My heart is so full of sorrow,
for the generations gone by
And mine still is a heart mournful for those to come,
when a disease eats a village,
It leaves a few to mourn and bury the dead
and through echoes of their footfalls walk
in the absence of their form.
Here lies the country we cherished,
Gone, gone, Is the country we loved.