SONG FOR AMANDA

(Tune: original)

The home we never knew	
Was wild and wide with rolling plains	
With gentle suns and singing rains	
And rivers flowing free,	
The home we'll never see	
Was dry and hard and carved in stone	
A place to wander all alone	
And hoard each drop of dew;	
We've seen more worlds than we can tell.	
If any one was heaven, or hell,	
or home, we never knew.	

The place from which we came	
Was full of life and light and song	
With trees that flourished tall and strong	
And beasts of every kind;	
The place we'll never find	
Was cold and bare and made us wise,	
Death was the penance, life the prize	
In its unending game;	
Is it so terrible a crime	
If we do not recall the time	
And place from which we came?	

The life that once was ours
Passed peacefully from day to day
Till finally it slipped away
Into unending sleep,
The life we could not keep
Was battle joined with every breath
Against the cosmic force of death
And all its fatal powers;
We may have won, we may have lost.
Death's path and ours have seldom crossed.
But life--that once was ours.

The world we'll never know--
And yet we feel within our mind
There must have been one, lost behind
The multiverse's curve;
The world we don't deserve--
And yet to suspect gods we pray
That we will come to it some day
And feel it to be so;
Or else, down endless ages hurled,
Forever travelling from world
To world, we'll never know.