THEY CAME

For the victims of the new road….

They came to our land
And strong-armed us
With a curt warning,
To pack from houses we built
On a land we thought was ours.

Then they came with
Their caterpillars, cranes
And other metallic beastly predators,
To crumble our brittle houses of prey to dust;
An overreaching sacrifice
For a six-lane asphalt rug.

Then they pat our jutting backs
With fattened palms of meagre atonement…
How can five loaves and
Two fishes feed thousands?
When you’re not the Messiah
Why six when four will do?
“Simplicity, simplicty…”
Thoreau had always said,
But they had never listened.

They came and left all bare
After flattening our homes to asphalt
All in a hurried superficial scheme
For an old king to renew his title