Reconstruction Blues

How can mere four years seem like forever?
How can these stones be my beloved friends?
Have I affronted Heaven - and if I did,
where is my chance to try and make amends?
Like a fallen leaf blown on a gale,
I float over the broad land of the whale -
maybe to find an anchor, who knows?
Away from the Southern wind that blows
over the ruins we've striven to shelter
from the brother-war's blood-guzzling welter.
How can mere four years seem like forever?
How can our land, chastised, still live on?
Again we are in chains we thought broken -
but the world thinks 'twas about all chains gone.
I can't watch them smudge away the traces
of a way of life that used to be.
After four years with the weight of forever
on my shoulders, to the Old World I flee.