It sits like a plague on a rolled-out world; Taste the ashes in the clouds, On your tongue, In your voice, On the sugar-topped horizon And the slowly tilting moon. And the slowly dying sun. It sits like a plague, a reminder, a choice; The green leafed giants learn to move their frozen limbs, Yet sit like old defenders in a battle aeons lost. As a trail of steam and iron Flows across their flesh like snow. We sit like a plague, on a throne of ore, Ridden from the earth is the beauty that she bore; Atop the melting hillside, in a plume of toxic air, Sits the remnants of our past, And the peril they must share.