1969, by Ian Fletcher

Oh, don’t you remember them, the hippies,
those gentle souls who worshipped nature,
birds and trees, with their stoned-kind eyes,
faces so fair, who’d wear flowers in their hair?
Yes, they really did believe the LSD could set
them free while tripping on yellow submarines
in strawberry fields amidst the purple haze
which still bathes those long-forgotten days.
So, you won’t know they imagined a world
of love and peace with a universal liberty
in which all wars, all strife, would cease.
Thus, you are not aware that as children
they appeared more like demigods to us
these spiritual beings who would surely
one day be the future lords of humanity
in the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.
Alas, I find the years have not been kind
to the beautiful people now old and grey
a tired generation passing silently away
their vision ignored by our modern youth
who seem no longer to seek after the truth.
Yet know, though my own sand sinks fast
there is a certain consolation in my decline
in that I can allow my mind to travel back
to the past and dream with the hippies
all summer long in nineteen sixty-nine.