Oh sorrowful night! Oh desolate plains!
Of you I chant a dirge; of my existence I moan!
Why should I fly endlessly till my wings faint in pain?
What comfort can I find while I have no mate, and alone?
The humans have conquered our homelands
The sons of mankind have felled our forests!
The future of our species is now cast in Despair’s grisly hands
For I am now the last of all, and my life in Fate rests!
For the remaining of my sad and painful years
I shall waste it fleeing the man-monsters, and their lustful greed
My one, last hope is that my plaintiff song reaches their ears
And that my cries resounding in the trees, condemn their every deed!
Our kind was once beautiful, bedecked in plumage silver and gold!
But Grief has poisoned my garb, and turned it grey and beige
Our families were once happy; songs rung from young and old!
But Death has swung his sickle, and has ended our age
Tears dampen my feathers; sadness erodes my appearance
On what was once a golden breast, a crimson, bleeding heart clothes me!
It serves as a last, desperate warning; a warning for man’s lacking temperance
And if they don’t pay heed and repent? Then may the dice be cast and Fate see!
Before you use Nature’s great bounties
Ask yourself why you take them: for greed or for need?
You need timber for your fires, but our homes rest in the trees!
And taking one more than you need is lust’s first seed!
Poetry