Borderlands

I was thirteen years old

With a looming grey cloud

Of smoke on the skyline

I didn't know what it meant

For 'us' or for 'them'

I just knew that something

Bigger was coming our way

Now twenty years

Have flown by I suppose

And what we have to show

For them the devil only knows

In the world we made

In those dumbstricken days

What a world to bring you into

My smiling and sweet little girl

Who will you turn

To in a withering world?

So fractured and frenzied

And falling apart

May it spare the foundations

Of your delicate heart

They say that 'kids these days

Are growing up fast'

Faster than we thought we might

Have been in the past

So we're building our borders high

And we're harking back to days

When the loneliness

Inside us didn't feel this way

Oh sweet delicate child

May you find beauty

In the rugged and the wild

In a world so fractured

And falling apart

May it spare the foundations

Of your delicate heart

I pray you live well and live long

Show me I'm just old

And tired and teach me I'm wrong

And with all that's left in me

I'd do anything to see you

Build your spirit stronger than mine

Just build your spirit stronger than mine