We went into the Valley of Elah
looking for victory and reasons to carry on ,
when we got there those reasons had gone ;
they’d quietly slipped away
leaving us with nothing more to say ;
when we got back
we didn’t recognise ourselves ,
we looked at our faces in the mirror
that only showed someone else ;
all our words too had their meaning changed
for something that we couldn’t understand ,
and we who were born here
became strangers in our own land .
The sense of alienation and loss of identity is brilliantly brought out through words that are precise in meaning but yet create a certain overall vagueness.
Alien Nation : Alienation
So true that with time we can hardly make out what is right…