The Clearcut - Alda

Our hearts will ring hollow

In the silence of the clearcut

Where our hungry ghosts stalk the scalped hills

And we’ll find no sign on these slopes and fields

Nor in the fate we have written

In the scars of the land

Land-drinker!

Your truth is unspoken

Wretchedly you climb

Content to gnaw on the bones of your children

Our lungs to the fumes

Teeth to the grindstone

Our eyes splintered in unsleeping light

Oath-breaker!

Your hope has unraveled

There is a warp in the world

That flies from the cleft in your tongue

Sallow folds of painted rust

Splint of the bone, wrack of the writ

Caught in the teeth of the wheel

The earth has burned black beneath our feet

Yet still beneath the coil of the withered root

There is still life in the silence