These are the roads I travelled a lifetime ago,

Some took me to school, some to my favourite market,

Others to movies and cafes with my friends,

And some to walks with Mom, on an evening scarlet.

A life of unspeakable joy and reckless abandon,

We’d stumble and we’d fall,

But the world was at our feet,

And we’d grow up, and etch our dreams on the city walls.

 

Our journeys, however, take a turn sometimes,

Sending us away from our homes,

For a few years, or is it a few ages,

As life, around aspirations and hopes, roams.

But the hiraeth remains,

And tugs at the heartstrings,

Beckoning me to this city,

As a melancholy yearning sings.

A longing for the people and the places I lost,

The times that flew by, seeking the paths they went,

My city whispers to me to come home,

To relive the past that was once my present.

 

But there is no one here now, who’d call me,

To ask me, where I was and what I had gotten,

The city has moved on, leaving me clasped in the past,

A past long gone, and memories long forgotten.

No longer the fun and games,

No longer the sunny days, slept and dreamt,

Friends grown up, along with their responsibilities,

A shadow of the carefree times we had spent.

 

My eyes well up, reminiscing over the lost days,

The house we had, the home we built,

Love and laughter and soaring hopes,

In this city, where my family once lived.

A heartache that cries, and then goes numb,

Thinking of the life I had, and of the strings broken,

All I feel now, is dazed and empty and frozen,

Remembering the promises made and broken.

 

The city has forgotten me,

I am a stranger, lost in its polychrome,

I have a house that gives me abode,

But the time has taken away my home.

My heart is buried deep within its past,

And the present is lonely, and futureless,

For the past tore away a part of me,

As I watched in silence, tearful and tearless.

Abandonment and despair fill my senses,

Because I sob for my home, destroyed,

And there is no place in the world,

That will come close, and fill that void.