Pillar of the Sun : Emigration Song

(Alec Jones photo)

  

For those we never knew, from those who left

to those who stayed behind, a shared emptiness,

both sides of a wild and hungering sea,

bone-strewn shore to shore,


For those still gathered in the pubs, circle

your chairs and give us a song from the old days,

voices tuned to the wind, the lashing rain,

and to farewell— for the loss of generations

there is no metaphor.


All we ever wanted was each other,

we ache to have each other still— absence

is a hollow in the chest— and yet for all of that,

one's sunset is another's dawn— we children

of the gone and stayed behold the pillar

of the sun and dream we will.