risen again, embrace you for its own.
You are the boy who numbered clouds as friends,
saw soldiers in the waves, tigers in spray.
Awakened by the sea, you need not sleep
again in one who cloistered you so long,
prisoner to a promise unfulfilled.
Your sad ordeal is over; here is peace.
I am the coat of mail that you put on
to face a harder world at childhood's end.
Colleagues invented me. I called them friends
at your expense, you had to hide away.
Here is a place for you to gaze and play.
See how the sunlight gleams on Greenan sands
where once you left small footprints. Only you
can find their path again. My child, goodbye.
