"What We Built"

What people forget is the innocence of time
When peace can be heard in the children playing,
Heard in the sound of their bright laughter,
Unchanged by destruction and ruin.

They are the pure and they are the ones
Who will be there when we are gone.
To have failures of the past not be repeated,
We must ensure their innocence lives on,
Safe from the pain and darkness.

If anything, all that they must do
To destroy what we have built--their innocence,
Their naïveté, their purety, their peaceful lives--
Is to forget what we have done, how lost is our innocence,
Destroyed with wars and suffering.