O pride of my eyes, my homeland so dear,
Your lament is broken, ringing with fear.
I drifted to sorrow, a tide dark and deep,
With kohl of my pain, while the shadows all weep.
The laughter of youth is now wounded and torn,
Even the words are now bruised and forlorn.
[Bridge 1]
(Oud melody weaves into a mourning violin solo)
[Verse 2]
If I tried to write of your beauty and grace,
My words would all choke in this desolate place.
Or if I should weep for the ache in my soul,
With eyes swollen weary, beyond all control.
Exhausted the voice, and the dirge has gone hoarse,
The song of the poet has lost its true force.
[Verse 3]
The ink on the paper is heavy with shame,
Written in doubts that will never be tame.
I offer my heart, all consumed by the flame,
And take all my sight in your sorrowful name.
The blood of my kin on the mountain is spread,
Staining the soil where the fallen have bled.
[Climax]
(Drums pulse harder, saxophone and violin in intense sorrow)
Like you, I am stifled, in silence I drown,
Inside of my grief, a dark, crumbling town.
My heart is the home for the ghosts of the past,
With souls left unburied, no shroud for the last.
Where can they go? To what distance they fly?
When life is a whisper that’s destined to die.
[Verse 4]
How great we have grown in this wound and this pain,
The heart has excuse for the loss and the strain.
You leveled the walls where the joy used to dwell,
Between war and peace, in a living-room hell.
The speeches ring hollow, they don't mean a thing,
When bullets and fire take flight on the wing.
[Outro]
God save us from fate when it turns to the knife,
When fortune is hidden in shadows of strife.
I offer my life for your honor, my kin,
Until every infant has gray on his skin.
For you, O my mountain, my soul and my gun,
Remain till the end, till the setting of sun.
(Fading away with a lone saxophone wail)
