My youth was cast away like a broken ash tray

Over used and underpaid

Where disillusioned men extinguish the hopes of those more optimistic than them

And there’s a bloodline of generational sin

In need of a transfusion, but where to begin?

We transpose our pessimism into rhetoric and we call it wisdom

And we think we’re safe as the houses that we’ve built around our hearts

Our heads keep looking for an alternative to the monotony

To which we’ve bound ourselves haphazardly in matrimony

We need new verbs to displace the language that we’ve learned

But my tongue can’t seem to formulate

A response that doesn’t somehow relate to

Hope deferred or the wilderness of covenant forgot

Can I remember what I’ve lost?

We hung our harps upon the poplars and wept beside the river bank

In all my technicolour dreams I can’t unseen the things I’ve seen

Amidst captivity our native songs seem foreign thanks

Remind us refugees of our redemptive melody

And a fog descends on the valley of possibility

And I’m left peering into mystery once again

Oh what I wouldn’t give for a little clarity

But foreign currency can’t possibly afford such luxuries, but still

I hear my name on the wind

I taste the salt in the air

Somewhere beyond the unknown deep in the marrow of my bones

Lies an inheritance I cannot explain

A birthright within my veins

But I’m like a sea captain trying to recollect a horizon from his youth

But the water and sky blur indistinguishably at the point of convergence

And truth be told I’ve been adrift on open ocean for so long

I might not recognise the land from which I came

We hung our harps upon the poplars and wept beside the river bank

In all my technicolour dreams I can’t unseen the things I’ve seen

Amidst captivity our native songs seem foreign thanks

Remind us refugees of our redemptive melody

We laid our voices in the dust

Our tongues of fire swallowed up

For all the maps that I have seen I can’t get back to where I’ve been

Amidst uncertainty we’re colonised by fear of the unknown

Grant us the courage and faith to find our way back home

And the branches of this family tree are severed

Dismembered limbs stacked on the backs of each other

We’re awkwardly fumbling with unfamiliar hands

Devoid of the strength required to put us back together

We were once known as lovers

Ablaze with potential now we’re smouldering ash

Have mercy on this restless soul

Delivery me from the obscurity of exile and make me whole

When I close my eyes I dream of mountains that I’ve never climbed

But they’re strangely nostalgic and I think I understand why

Because they were made to be moved

Like hope was made to be fulfilled

Like impossible got stripped from my vocabulary at will

And I think it’s high time we embraced the risk of believing

Because surviving is not the same as living