The sacred tree
Stands in the mist
And snow
And has stood
Since the   
Beginning of
Time.

In silence it has
Witnessed it all:
The serpent
And temptation
Of man,
The shaping of
Rivers and valleys,
Vast flowing
Wheat fields,
Wild horses,
Oceans teeming
With fish.

The choregus
And the playwright,
The babbling
Voices of the crowds,
The drama under
An Athenian sky
On marble seats,
Fluted white columns,
Libraries filled with
Scrolls and books,
Golden spires
And shinning domes
Suspended in the air
To the sounds of
Choral singing,
The troubadours,
Knights and gondoliers.

Broken crosses,
The rise and fall,
Barbaric Turkic hordes
Blood-soaked
In the smoke of battle
To the sounds of
Hungarian cannons,
The ruin and desolation
Of gnashing teeth
And streaming tears
On trembling cheeks
Of women and children
Huddled in corners
Sold off in bazaars.

The new world,
La Belle Époque,
The factories and trains
Of old London Town,
Artists and poets,
The psychology
Of a new age,
Marching jackboots
And cruel Germanic voices,
A generation of blood
Shed on crooked crosses.

Rising new cities
With towers
Of steel and glass,
Smoking oil fields
And blood-soaked sand,
The hands that will
Never wash clean,
The piles of cash
And the fat men
In suits in secret rooms,
The hatred of belief,
The bombs
In music halls,
The rising smog
And rivers chocked
With plastic,
Shit and glass.

The sacred tree
Has stood since
The beginning
Of time and has
Witnessed it all,
It remembers the earth
Fondly with a melancholy
And stands solemnly
In the last forest
Awaiting the end
Of days.

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With a digital drawing from Nikos Laios

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