I Sing of an age that’s almost flown
Birds whose voices raised the morning sky
Wild landscapes, spread out to receive the naked sun
Trees whose roots embraced the earth, yet towered high
Seeds that sprang up fragile life, silent but for the wind

I sing of the age of crumbling dust
Rumbling wheeled boxes that fume with piercing cries
Houses molded for masses, as if carved from a single stone
Plants with their exhalations of thick smoke, clouding corroded concrete fields

Forests that burn while communities fall
Beneath a cacophony of chorused lies
Millions enslaved to masters ticking on the wall
Hands that wring the time from unlived lives

Endless games of monopoly and musical coins
Galleries of staged photographs, manufactured mirrors to memory
Chiseled bodies, carved into perfection, whose occupants still seethe with self-loathing and hate
Gold palaces, beneath which bones rattle the dark restlessly

Stories of renewal on tips of tongues that never tasted rain
The deserts of souls whose blood runs dry
Endless grey complacency to numb the festering and open wounds
A harvest of pain sewn from all we deny

Wars waged to sunder, to ravish with rage
A wasteland of frightened faces fleeing for shelter, turned away
Nuclear families forced to split apart, fission into half-lives
Screams in school yards and the drip of silence cold as death

Generations gaunt and starving and those who crushed them to make their start
Spilled greed that leaves a spreading stain
A sea of fear to fill the ever-widening divide
ANONYMOUS sentries sent to defend and guard against each broken heart

Children who are taught to lose themselves before they’re formed
Men and women wanderers with vacant hollow eyes
Their tears from banished terrors fall stillborn
Life lingers, though breath’s motion fades as oceans rise

I sing of an age bereft and slowly breaking
Each, though aching, standing alone
Among the paths still left to us for taking
Could we accept and meet this age, and one another, as our own