It happened a long time ago

In a time before time was a word

When a girl fell asleep

And it started to creep

Like a creature most deeply interred 
That had crawled by its' hands from the deep

Now I weep, and my memory is blurred

It happened a long time ago

In a place where the rain was a man
And he ambled around
All the burgeoning ground
With a sound like a watering can

And he moved rather quickly at that
The lonely and quiet old man

And the creature had sat

With a pipe, and a hat

And was watching the rain as he ran

 

In that place, such a long time ago

When the lovely, young sunlight was cold

When it tumbled, and fell

Like a wonderful spell

And the air swam with faeries of gold

As we tried to remember the smell

Of our childhood love in the park
When the wandering memory flows
Through the summers of old

When our grandfathers told

Of a tree with a magical bark
That was mangy, and covered with mould
And no one knows, where the dogwood grows
But they hear it, at night, in the dark

Splashing around in the well

 

It happened a long time ago
When the night was a song of the soul
And the day was a trick of the mind
And the bloody-eyed hare
With its' maniac stare
Tried to steal everything it could find
As it loped on two legs in the wood

And its' fur was all matted, and gray

As it giggled away
With the night, and the day
To the field where the dying things stood
Hopping home to its' desolate hole
Where the creature was watching it play

Although everyone said he was blind
And the pools of his sockets were bare
Though his fingers were lined

With the scars of his mind

He could smell what was slumbering there

He knew well what the mad rabbit stole

 

That was such a long, long time ago

When the warm summer rain came down slow

And the cold, lonely mountains were young

In a time before beauty had sinned

When the vagabond wind

With his overcoat pinned 

Licked our backs with a flickering tongue

And the darkness fell soft, like the snow

As the stranger was lying in bed

With the splashes of night up above

And the creature had said

With a voice in his head

Something nobody wanted to know

Something soft as a murderous love
In the morning the stranger was dead

And the creature had sung
With a hole in his lung

And the whimpering sun came up red

 

It happened a long time ago

Before I covered my eyes

Now the shadow thing flies

In the rippling skies

And I wish that my memory could go

To that place that I never will know

In a time before time was a word

When a girl had a dream 

By a sinister stream

And the voices of Nothing were heard

But every last word was a scream

 

Then it happened

A long time ago ...




 

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