My limbs they stretched out to the heavens above,
As if pleading for deliverance,
They destroyed my brothers, my sisters, my offspring....
They dug deep into the bowels of my mother,
They bore into her tender flesh,
Sapping that precious liquid
That gave birth to me and my family.
They built tall and ugly structures
That shut out the light and warmth of that heavenly being.

It was winter for me that summer.
Parched and cracked were the lips of my mother,
My blossoms they drooped and wrinkled and died,
My limbs were now brittle and bare.
My roots were now shrunken and shriveled.
No more for me the joyous twitter of birds,
No more did I harbour, and shelter, protect,
The eggs and the fledglings, so tender,
So downy, so soft, and so helpless,
No more did the children around me dance,
No more did the aged in my cool shade rest
No more did the fruit-pluckers harvest my rich crop.
Instead came the dark and shadowy shapes,
They flapped their grey wings,

They settled on my limbs so empty,
Silent mourners watching, waiting, greedily....
And then they came with their weapons, so cruel,
But though their sharp blades as they sawed at my trunk,
Caused me no physical pain,
Yet my gummy tears streaked my dry and crumbling bark
And fell on my mother,
Perhaps moistening those lips so cracked and so parched.
They chopped at me, each blow a death knell,
Till with a great shouldering crash,
O collapsed onto the bosom of my mother once more,
A bosom that once had been verdant and tender,
That bosom that once and been alive and crawling with life,
That bosom now barren.

Here now I lie to sleep my last sleep,
My arms embracing my mother one last time.
With the grey light of dawn
They will come once more,
Their weapons freshly honed,
To chip and to chop,
To cut and to bind,
To stack and to load,
On tractor and cart,
To take me far and away,
To homes and to furnaces,
To kilns and to factories,
To burn and to destroy me
On a hundred funeral pyres.