Work Text:
When I find out the disaster, I am stunned beyond all breath.
I lie in bed all evening with my face as white as death.
The red blood is all I can see, the tears trapped in my heart:
I called myself Imperial once; I have been cut apart.
The gall is in my vomit, the acid at my throat:
I must purge all of my masters’ meat that ever me did bloat.
I must tear the skin off my palms which have touched an eyeball’s yoke.
I would cut my heart out which had ever beat for them a stroke.
Oh Alderaan, my Alderaan – how can this thing be true?
Could your existence have been cut off while I talked to you?
Oh Alderaan, oh Alderaan! how can a world be gone?
How can you have just vanished, the place where I was born?
I am betrayed by masters I had thought loyal to be;
If true I am, I must betray: for this massacre means
This Empire that had clothed me, this Empire that had fed me –
They have blown up all I knew and loved to dust and smithereens.
I pack my bag, my black flight-suit, the items to my name,
Now take my Navy ID-card and hold it to the flame,
And as the plastiflim grows black and runs before the heat
The letters of my name are ash and the burnt smell is sweet.
Oh Alderaan, my Alderaan, haven from strife and scorn –
You are a space of death now, the place where I was born.
Oh Alderaan, which would be spared all fire and deluge –
Oh Alderaan, my Alderaan, the poets’ safe refuge.
I have no home, no family, no title, house nor deed;
I bear only my fighting blood, my helmet and my creed.
My only home shall be the place where people still live free;
My only kin the Rebel-folk who bleed and burn like me –
Who bleed and burn as my lost relatives they burned and bled;
Yet only, I am still alive, while love and friends are dead;
And the fire that consumes me is the heat for justice clean;
And the blood which flows from my wounds the thought of what could have been.
Oh Alderaan, my Alderaan, where life and peace were one –
The white-domed university, all sparkling in the sun;
Oh Alderaan, where, once I dreamt, Beauty would always rule:
My Alderaan, forgive me: I have been a kriffing fool.
I am an Imp deserter, and the Rebels are not kind;
Too often have Imperials used desertion as a blind.
With fire in my stomach and the tears behind my eyes
I tell my name and number and the number of their lies.
The stern Cracken grows softer as my voice breaks with your name;
The grave, watchful Antilles views me now with lessened blame.
They do not take a long time after this word to decide.
My heart has long been with them: now my place is at their side.
Oh Alderaan, my Alderaan, none will forget your name;
For years to come your blood will be a banner of our shame.
You live on in my veins, who swear your enemies shall mourn
For Alderaan, oh Alderaan, the place where I was born!
– Apr 2004