For Real Toads: using a breakup song

The remarkable Isadora Gruye has posed us a real poser for today's challenge at the online writers' group Imaginary Garden with Real Toads. We're to use (some of) the lyrics from a favorite "breakup song" and write them into a new poem that isn't about breaking up.
I was raised in what was then a small city in an agricultural area of beautiful British Columbia. Our local radio station, CKOV (Sherry will remember this) played a mixture of country music and popular music in the 50s and 60s.
I first heard this song by the man who originated it, Hank Williams, Senior.

Johnny Cash recorded a heartfelt version of it, too, but for all-time, real-true, sad-blue, missing-you music, Elvis did it best in Hawaii: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7iasdKi5-8

  

It could not have been an easy song into which to introduce some real musicality, but I'd say BJ Thomas managed to do that, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra9eLLg_6uE

But I'm to write a poem using some of the lyric from it, so, in the wake of Venus crossing the sun, I chose what has always been my favorite line from this song.

The silence of a falling star lights up a purple sky,

and scientists, forever since, have stopped to wonder why.

They’ve studied long, they’ve studied hard,

Richard Schear photo

and scratched their heads in wonder:

Does a star, when falling, make no noise?

Or does it sound like thunder?

  

In the video of the rehearsal for his world-broadcast Hawaii show, Elvis said I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry is the saddest song he ever heard, and I don't doubt he heard a lot of songs in his lifetime. 

However, my very favorite sad song is this old Scottish love song recorded by the wonderful Paul Robeson:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BfpyPy2Cc8

For Real Toads: Nazim Hikmet

Kenia introduces the writers' group Imaginary Garden with Real Toads to the person and the works of Turkish poet/revolutionary/martyr Nazim Hikmet.
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"Hikmet's imprisonment in the 1940s became a cause célèbre among intellectuals worldwide; a 1949 committee that included Pablo Picasso, Paul Robeson, and Jean Paul Sartre campaigned for Hikmet's release.

“On November 22, 1950, the World Council of Peace announced that Nazım Hikmet was among the recipients of the International Peace Prize along with Pablo Picasso, Paul Robeson, Wanda Jakubowska and Pablo Neruda." (Wikipedia)

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I'm a lifelong fan of the great American singer Paul Robeson, who was exiled during the McCarthy era. Hikmet's connection to him, and the fact that Robeson sang a translation of Hikmet's poem "The Little Girl" (as did Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and many others) made me feel an instant connection with Hikmet who was unknown to me until now. Thanks for the introduction, Kenia!

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Hikmet
Wikipedia photo

"Nazım Hikmet's Davet ("Invitation") is one of his best known poems. Nazım tells what he wants, and what life should be like, in the poem's last lines about living 'alone and free like a tree' and 'in brotherly love like a forest'." (Wikipedia)

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I found myself intrigued by the structure of this poem "Invitation" and have here attempted something using that form and borrowing something of the wording. As I wrote, I had in mind the first pioneers to cross Canada from east to west.

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EXPLORATION

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Opening up the land toward the far west

Beaver, buffalo, bad weather, to reach perhaps the Pacific 

this land is ours.

Losing oxen, horses, children, wives,

as we continue on toward the wild unknown,

to call this land ours.

High mountains, rocky mountains, impassable,

yet await after we cross the wide prairie,

to make this land ours.

To move like a salmon in a stream, like an eagle on high,

To follow the rivers rushing toward the sea,

to open this land of ours.