Hallowed is that land, wherein lies your mortal frame.
Blessed is your sacrifice and honoured is your name.
Though, when next we meet you will not recognise me…

I am not the innocent youth that once I used to be.
I am not the same youth in whom once you confided and knew…
For I share the burdens and torments of old soldiers…of we unhappy few.

I have lost my hair and my teeth have yellowed…
My jowls are full and my eyes have mellowed.
I have lost that bright spark, through life’s care worn blight…

The innocence of my youth has long since been put to flight.
From that time when once you breathed so much has passed…
But not between us…not when by death you were held fast…

That day…when we as two friends…our bond was split asunder,
And we knew then only a short interlude of one another.
When you aged no more and stopped knowing me,

For in the earth you were encumbered…and your life ceased to be.
Our time together is now only a distant memory fair…
When shared we two…hope, and faith and inspiration there.

And yet I know of you as if it had been only yesterday…
Embalmed with the freshness of youth…never for you to lose your way.
Not from worldly evil to wish to have transcended,

And for those yet to be born…their freedom to have defended.
Not to have been cursed by the malevolence visited upon the world once free,
Nor ever to have lost faith in the goodness of humanity.

And you live not in the shadows of guilt and shame…
To feel the unbearable weight that is not absolved of blame,
And to know of what unholy evil since then has passed…

Of what disquiet, hatred and profanity upon the world has been cast.
Perchance to wish to wake up…if you can sleep…and know
You can yet make that selfless difference to others…though

Then knowing that you must live with it all again…
The loss, the guilt the torment and the pain.
And in your passing you knew not of what I did…

For then if you were to know…God forbid…
For if you knew you would have wanted to have died anyway…
To have rode to Valhalla…or the Ferryman to pay.

Maybe it would have been better if also I had died…
And fled from this ill-mannered world, with you to lie beside.
For I would not have wanted you to live as I have done…

Filled with dread for the world at each setting sun.
And to think thereof…when your life you did forfeit…
Your ultimate sacrifice…was humankind truly worthy of it?