My heart cries a river!

When the Vale was green

and the hills lush,

When streams were clear

and didn’t carry all that slush;

When the lights glimmered

Like stars in the sky,

And did not, with wear and overuse

Struggle to stay on, then simply die;

When flowers grew on hillsides

in gay abandon,

When the corpse of our callousness

The hills did not carry as a burden;

When trees stood tall guarding

and guiding our paths and highway,

When birds lived in them

Telling us the time, and the

Way in which the wind would sway;

When dogs had roads to run on

and were not run over on,

when there were avenues people could walk on

be it night, noon or a bustling morn;

When roads were meant to be driven upon

And had not turned into parking places,

When shops lay apart

from where our houses were

And between them were vast spaces;

When we laboured to build

So as, in them, to live a life,

And not having built a monstrosity

To carry it on our shoulder like a strife;

When we tended and cared

To leave a world in which we grew,

Alas, not to tell fables ’bout birds

And bees, and the fauna and trees

For there were left only a few;

When we taught our children

The worth of values, respect and duty,

When we had the time to sit with them

And behold the universe in all its beauty;

When we dreamed of a future

And of a bright tomorrow,

When we didn’t kill our today

With greed and filled it with sorrow;

When we cared for all around

And lived in a state of harmony,

And not having plundered and looted

And ravaged, began to rewrite our own destiny;

My heart bleeds and weeps for the

World we’ve left behind,

Have we burned and buried it so deep

That those wondrous times we will never find!

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