What has happened to forkfuls of earth,
Tossed away to reveal new potatoes?
What has happened to flocks of sheep,
Put out to pasture on green hillsides?
Where are the lines of clothes,
Flying crisply in the wind,
While chickens peck on corn below?
Sunlight replaced by soot,
Fragrace of wild flowers,
Gone, now only smoke.
Majestic trees, leaves rustling,
Torn down, factories in their wake.
Peat and straw,
Wattle and mud,
Things of the past,
Their places taken by brick and concrete.
Shovels toss coal now,
Instead of dirt.
The men work in mines,
Not in fields,
The women in sweatshops,
Laboring over clothing not their own.
Fireside and garden foreign.
Children slave on in mills,
No happy frolicking in pastures,
Gathering eggs for Mother,
Chasing rabbits, collecting pebbles.
"And this is a 'better future',"
Mourns an old man and his wife,
As they sit thinking of their children,
In one of the last places
Pristinely idyillic pastures
Still intact.
How much longer
Until their home, too,
Will be gone?
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