A shepherd’s taradiddle (not your normal blog post)

Go, go, go, go, transhumant sheep

Shorn of your reason for living,

May the toes of your feet not fester or curl

From inertia and factory farming

 

While the coarse sceptics cry “You are rosy-eyed twits

And your dreams have no possible function”,

the road to the pasture is buried in flak

and the herdsman is lost in corruption

 

Shepherds who roam with their flocks on the hills

See something commuters are wanting

Long days on the hike with no shelter or rest

Give their minds an extra dimension

 

There is joy in the work be it ever so cold

and the coldness is not of the boardroom,

and I’m counting the rhymes as I gaze at the stars

With the beat of my heart an oration

 

Oh I know I sound sad, and impossibly mad

To suggest we should turn the clock back,

But I’m not saying that – only look what you’re doing

By killing the seeds of creation

 

“We can’t feed the world”, say executive suits

Who calculate all by their profits,

“You are crushing the world” moan the ghosts of the whales

Cleaned right out of the ocean

 

“Ridiculous twaddle”, yell the sleek CEOs

As they lust over loot they will gather

“Suck it up, get a life, we need oil, we need strife

so the fewer can prosper the higher.”

 

The birds of the air and the sheep of the field

Run screaming from our depredations.

Go, go, go while you can, till barbed wire ends your plans

And no grass is left on the mountains.

Maybe I could set this to music, like Phil Ochs.