Industrialization

Once, the land stretched wild and free,
where buffalo roamed in endless sea.
Rivers ran clear, the sky stood wide,
untouched by smoke, unsullied by pride.
The earth had breath, the winds ran true,
before the iron monsters grew.

But progress bore a ruthless son,
forged in fire, steel begun.
A child of hunger, vast, obscene,
industrial hands that stripped her clean.
Where once was life, now ruin stands,
the toil of men, the theft of lands.

The rivers choke, the forests fall,
the blackened breath consumes them all.
Monuments of iron rise,
belching soot into the skies.
The oceans clot with oil’s stain,
the heavens weep in acid rain.

The earth’s not taken, she is torn,
her veins run dry, her mountains worn.
The drills descend, the hammers pound,
they rip her heart beneath the ground.
To feed a beast that does not sleep,
whose hunger swallows all it reaps.

The dead of ages, lost to time,
now fuel the gears of man’s design.
Once they towered, ruled the land,
now they burn by human hand.
Their voices lost in smoke and flame,
forgotten lives, forgotten names.

And still they toil, the meek, the poor,
told to mend what they endure.
“Recycle, save, do what’s right,”
as towers drown the world in blight.
The lords of greed spill waste and lies,
while poisoned waters whisper cries.

A drop of oil, a dollar gained,
worth more than voices, lost, restrained.
The wheel still turns, the furnace glows,
its hunger endless as it grows.
A beast of metal, raw and blind,
that feeds upon all mankind.

Yet greed will meet its final cost,
when all is spent, when all is lost.
The gears will crack, the flames will fade,
the towers fall, the debts be paid.
And when the last great engine dies,
beneath the smog, the earth will rise.