Eavan Boland - Child of Our Time lyrics

Yesterday I knew no lullaby But you have taught me overnight to order This song, which takes from your final cry Its tune, from your unreasoned end its reason; Its rhythm from the discord of your murder, Its motive from the fact you cannot listen. We who should have known how to instruct With rhymes for your waking, rhymes for your sleep Names for the animals you took to bed, Tales to distract, legends to protect, Later an idiom for you to keep And living, learn, must learn from you, dead. To make our broken images rebuild Themselves around your limbs, your broken Image, find for your sake whose life our idle Talk has cost, a new language. Child Of our time, our times have robbed your cradle. Sleep in a world your final sleep has woken.