sarajevo / this is the time lyrics

a) Sarajevo

In the town of Sarajevo
There's an old medieval square
There's a church aside one corner
Most believe was always there

It was built a thousand years before
Any now were born
And its glory was its belfry
With its stones all gray and worn

Now there's a gargoyle on that belfry
And he's been up there for years
And he has watched and he has pondered
What is laughter
What are tears

For these peculiar institutions
That are so well known to man
When your heart is made of stone
Are quite hard to understand

And he's never found his answers
As he sees the years go by
But he watches and he wonders
With his stone unblinking eyes...

(it was the year of nineteen-ninety
and the berlin wall was down
and a thousand years regretted
now laid buried in the ground)

(and the prophets read the future
and the the omens all seemed kind
in the classic words of dickens
it's surely was the best of times)

b) This is the time (1990)

Watching in silence
I hesitate
It was not in the plain
All of our lives we could
Only wait
If was not in our hands

And every war where we took the day
They were all in our head
And though in the dark we could dream at night
They were better unsaid

But this is the time
And this is the place
And these are the signs
That we must embrace

The moment is now
In all history
The time has arrived
This is the one place to be

We placed our years in the hourglass
They were never unearved
Still we seemed destined to watch them pass
It was never our turn

But this is the time
And this is the place
And those are the years
That we must erase

The moment is now
In all history
If we had to choose
This is the one place to be...