If the boy who wanted to cross the street
Was not run over, and
If the rose that was left on my table
Was not wilted, and
If the man who wanted to embrace the world
Was not buried, and
If the milk on the breast for the newborn baby
Was not bitter,
Then this world of mine would be for me to live in.
But alas, the boy is dead, run over,
And the wilted rose turned black overnight,
And the man held the baby as he went underground.
So today it is decided, as the day of love draws close,
That the boy shall look to newer streets
That lead to fields of roses
Where love and beauty embraces souls,
Or deadly doses of poisoned venom
That killed before contact.
The boy once played in his backyard,
With friends and fancies juvenile,
But too many creeping thoughts have haunted him,
And too many sleeping joys have denied him,
And too many of his expectant hopes have been doused;
He looks now through eyes that have forgotten
To see such things.
As he'd grown up, many a rose had landed
On his doorsteps in his dreams,
But he spent his time until full-grown
Without any in his woken hands.
The man he became didn't forget the child
And reared up with his stock of fuel,
To tell the world what he believed,
And give to it something to be cherished,
Alas again, the man was buried,
Under the rocks of power, in a circus
Where the ringmasters didn't like him.
And while dying he had remembered,
How once as a baby he had held
His mother's breast against his mouth
As his hungry heart led him to that
One pure source of eternal manna,
But discovered that the milk that came out
Was brown and bitter, and caustic to his gums.
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