Ages of dust have covered the earth
With fear and death and flesh and birth.
I know there was a city here –
A city built on love and cheer.

A peaceful people settled down.
The saw the forest all around.
They said “We’ll build a city here.
A city where we need not fear.”

The houses grew up from the trees.
I look, and I can almost see
The happiness that once was here.
But here I stand and feel no cheer.

The flesh of seven hundred bore
The flesh of seven hundred more.
A nation started rising here.
A nation born of love and cheer.

The time flew by. The nation grew.
But all I see is brown and blue.
A revelation strikes me here:
The sand and sky are void of cheer.

And so I think, and then I see
In my mind’s eye, a sea of trees.
A civil war in the forest here.
The trees are burning, death is near.

The birds have ceased their rapturous song,
But no-one knows what had gone wrong.
The fields, I see, were red right here.
The earth was stained with blood and fear.

A thousand years or more have passed.
That nation, sadly, did not last.
A people was forgotten here.
A people plagued by death and fear.

What once was earth is earth again.
I close my eyes and feel their pain.
They say there was a city here.
I sit to rest... and shed a tear.