Poem: The language of greed

They came to speak of trees, and the wind, 
but it fell upon heads that only had eyes and mouths.
Soon, they realised, these people did have ears,
but could only hear their own language,
and so, they began to speak it.

With each new word,
of this tongue, that they had really lived with all along, 
their own words, from that special place, slowly became
disfigured, lost their magic, their essence, their roots,
and though the arguments remained ostensibly for the same good,
they would do none.

They had wrapped the mountains and moors,
in promises that would feed their hungry eyes and mouths,
which as it should turn out, were the problem all along.
Of course, beauty still mattered for beauty’s sake,
but it would not be spoken of any more,
for there was more to be made, 
than it could offer them. 

Paterson, Hunter Valley
April, 2022