Natural Man

The man I saw at the edge of the wood

Had flowers, twined in his hair,

His jerkin was both green and ragged

His legs were brown and bare,

The boots he wore were a journeyman’s

Had seen much better a day,

He watched the encroaching housing

Then he turned in sadness away.

 

I found him later, deep in a dell

Where he sat on a fallen tree,

His head was cradled, deep in his hands

In a picture of misery,

I said: ‘What seems to ail you, friend,

Is there anything I can do?’

He muttered something under his breath,

‘It’s almost too late for you!’

 

I sat and faced him, sat on the stump

Of a tree that was felled before,

Cut down for somebody’s firewood

By a rattling steel chainsaw,

He said, ‘You’re just the last of the crew

Destroying the lay of the land,

There once was a time when the world was new,

We tended the earth by hand.’

 

He reached on down for a fist of dirt

That was rich, and dark and brown,

Then let it slip through his fingers

Slowly, back to the fertile ground,

He raised a finger, ‘listen to that

It’s the cruel sound of fate,

You call it urban development,

I call it the sound of hate!’

 

The bulldozers were felling the trees

At the further end of the wood,

I could hear the shrieking, creaking cries

As the trees came down for good.

‘This forest covered a hundred miles

When the lord would ride to hounds,

But he always left the trees to stand

In the Royal Hunting Grounds.’

 

‘And men would cherish the crops they grew,

They would reap what they had earned,

For man had risen up out of the earth

And to earth he would return.

But then you came with your railway lines

And you cut the land in two,

You dug canals through the pasture fine

And as nature died, you grew.’

 

‘The land was filling with engineers

With iron and steel they toiled,

They had no thought for the scenery

For every scene, they spoiled,

They’d lost that link with the humble earth

That their fathers had before,

But gloried in their cities and towns

As they linked up, shore to shore.’

 

‘And here you come to destroy the rest

By way of your huge machines,

To tear apart at the tender heart

Of a world now lost in dreams.’

The man then stood, turned to the wood

And waved, was lost to view,

‘I trust you’ll enjoy your new estate

When nature has done with you!’

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[quinfinn]

it has always troubled me, the way man encroaches upon nature and develops every square mile of land they can in the interest of profit and material gain. already, man is paying the price for his trespasses, in the suburbs...when people and their pets are attacked by wild animals because we have encroached upon their natural habitat...and all the aquifers are becoming poisoned by "progress". yep, mother earth will have the last laugh eventually. this is a fiercely awesome write!

[David Scott]

I liked the 6th stanza best... we try to "reap" more than we sow. We take what we do not earn and "others" have to pay for it.
Progress? Hard to always know. You pose a question that will be debated until the day "nature has done with" us all.
Well penned my friend.

[Tate Morgan]

A sad tribute to us all is it not? The world will not miss us when we are But dirt. I suppose they'll come a day when there will only be a few people left. Who have seen the birds and trees as we now see them. I drive across the United States through Ohio and Indiana. And I remember hearing how both the states were giant forests hundred and 50 years ago. In the span of one century we have leveled them tiled them drained them, and left nothing but flat empty fields. Beware of man. He destroys everything he touches, including himself.