You ask me if I still remember what you meant to me
in those brightly golden days
that filled tumultuous lives with wondrous hopes,
undaunted by the death and dark destruction
that existed far removed from
our immediate ken.

And now, and now in these benighted
topsy-turvy times when love lies bleeding
in the urban battlefields
that are our personal birthright,
and our inheritance of that early
insouciant disdain.

Will we still remember fantasies and dreams
transmogrified into harsh reality,
or hopes that never were fulfilled.
With nothing left but fading scraps
of paper or a tape or two
and no instrument to play them on.