Yankee Doodle

Study room, playing the piano

Sunlight slanting in

Tapping on the frosted windows

Friends peeping in.

’76 or ’77, sometime back then

When everyone was young

I played the magic piano

And friends came in.

Always the tune Yankee Doodle

Lilting over terrace floors

Floating over bougainvillea blossoms

Knocking at old doors.

So much fun, so much joy

Had we all, girls and boys

Scattered all over the world today

Where Yankee Doodle no longer plays.

Or perhaps it does a haunting note

Stopping the dull day in its stride

Playing hide and seek

With time…

Yankee Doodle times are past

Yankee Doodle dandy

Life is real and not all play

And not all sugar candy.

What happened to the girls and boys?

Not all fine and dandy.

Fairy tales are joy and woe

If you had noticed as we go.

Old houses, sunlit pools,

Are now exceptions, not the rule.

Where we once with laughter played

Stands a new building, grotesque grey.

And gone are now, the tall kind trees,

Where once thoughts roamed wild and free,

Children, strangers to play

Take over our ghosts today.

Did we think that friendship would stay?

Unspoilt by grown up ways?

In a way it has held good.

Though not as we had thought it should.

Love, betrayals, bloodshed, brine

Great comrades, greater whines,

Battered wives and bliss filled years

Moments of laughter, moments of tears.

Why did it not stay?

As perfect as it had promised to be?

Down by the magic years

Blessed by the jamrul tree?

Yankee Doodle times are past

Yankee Doodle dandy

Life is real and not all play

And not all sugar candy.

Colours of the deep sea changes

And yet remain the same,

Black to blue, from green to purple,

And back to grey again.

So do we – from love, to indifference,

From envy to fondness and pain,

Influenced by those we know not

We find ourselves again.

How easy it is to believe others,

Than trust our own memories,

How easy to fall a prey to malice,

Distrust and jealousy.

The strains of Yankee Doodle

Held our friendship fast

But the lilt of the music

How could it last?

And as friendship fades

And memories die today

How can the magic of the jamrul hold

When the tree is chopped away?

What does it matter that bonds turn to dust?

That even golden friendship rusts?

Something cannot be taken away

But what it is, I cannot say…

Yankee Doodle times are past

Yankee Doodle dandy

Life is real and not all play

And not all sugar candy…