As we sit around the glow
that is our somber cavern’s foundation,
the elder who remembers stands
to recite humanity’s sad narration.

“It seems like so long ago,”
the old man declares,
“ That we destroyed the Earth, our mother,
a crime that you children have been given to bear.
A black cup has been forced unto you
for your ancestors’ crime is inherited.
It is penitence innate as original sin
that all of the mother’s children must take part in.

There was a time, that I remember,
oh so long ago,
when the world was clean and fair.
but we, in our greed and folly,
chose to forgo it all.

I was but a young boy then,
yet I remember well
the hatred of the nations and
the news of the bombs that fell,
igniting our foretold annihilation.

We wrought our own extermination.

It was afterwards that the cold seeped in,
colder than Lake Cocytus,
Humankind immersed in Dante’s 9th hell,
our treachery upon our mother unforgiven.
No longer could we run through her grassy fields
nor swim in her clear blue lakes.

The children shall suffer for humanities’ mistakes.

Few of us survived our destruction,
the Armageddon which we ourselves had blindly bought.
Those of us left are here right now,
left only with our burden to relate
the finale which our hatred ultimately brought.

Here, my children,
is the moral of humanity’s terrible tale,
We destroyed our mother
and this is what we got --
Living in a cavern
with so little in our lot.
We’ve learned the price of hatred,
We’ve learned the price of greed,
so let us never forget the simple old adage --
that all we need is an open mind
and love for one another.
Remember our story well,
for our history must be passed on.
Don’t allow the new generations
to forget what mine forgot.”