The Punishment

Rising from bottom to top, top to bottom

Signs of rot, signs of sin

Signs of sun

Signs of water

In the air

In your lungs

We have seen centuries that contain years

And years that contain centuries

Ground of the Enets

Became Norilsk

And Lenapehoking

Became a steel hell

We have failed

Time and time again

And always lapse into

Efforts to avoid

The punishment

Finally it comes though

We felt it would

As a stirring in the sky

And as a breaking of ice

I have heard that stirring as you have

I have heard the crumbling brick from across the earth

I have heard cries of the indigenous silenced

Only to come manifest as fire

Bodies have begun to fall in front of you

Voices from the cold that warned

Of their own demise

You silenced their song

You ignored their cries

The blood is on our hands

Extinction events wrought by consumptive greed

Come to claim us

And we cry for change now

No weeping at corpses of cows

Or the sight of Inuit starving

But only for the Earth killing those that kill it

We have failed

Time and time again

And always lapse into

Efforts to avoid

I have heard that stirring as you have

I have heard the crumbling brick from across the earth

I have heard cries of the indigenous silenced

Only to come manifest as fire