I have been looking back through some of my past scribblings this Christmas. I wrote the following poem some time in the late 1980s/early 1990s, when my children were young. It’s never been published or performed, no-one’s ever read it except me. Maybe it only makes sense to me. But I find the sentiment has surfaced strongly in the latest book, so perhaps the time has come to share the insights of a thirty-something stay-at-home Mum living in South-East England in the time of Thatcher’s Britain, wondering why no-one in power was getting as worried as I was about our relationship with the rest of the natural world.

The Promised Land

They came with spear and sword and bow
Upon the promised land
The glory caught their hearts and souls
They cried, here do we stand!
Here shall we stay and feel no more
The desert ocean’s scourge
Here root and branch we stake our claim
Turn from the restless urge
Here shall we plant our seed and grow
Great riches to defend
           But the wiser heads kept travelling
           For they knew how it would end

Other searchers found them
And other hearts were lost
To greenness and to fairness
So they did not heed the cost
The prize was worth the winning
To fight for or defend
            But the wiser heads kept travelling
            For they knew how it would end

With horse and bloody sword a host
Of conquerors came down
To burn and raze and kill and steal
And win a great reknown
Till the lure of milk and honey
Drew them to the soil
They beat their swords to ploughshares
And turned to honest toil
And sought all ways they knew
The ever-weeping wound to mend
            But the wiser heads kept travelling
            For they knew how it would end.

Armies marched with fire and bow
And raged from shore to shore
Invoking gods and devils
And claiming more, and more
Seduced by dreams of glory
And the ever-promised land
            But the wiser heads kept travelling
            For they knew how it would end

Machinery of war grew grim
And peace it built it’s own
The massive bulk of factories
The huddle of the town
And fires burned in chimney stacks
And fires burned in hell
And fires burned in seas of mud
Where nameless heroes fell
And dreams of new Jerusalem
Took up the age old steel
That cuts the soil and cuts the flesh
And will not let man feel
The wind across the desert
The gale upon the sea
The spirit of the traveller
Or the raven flying free

And all the laws we’ve built to keep us from each others’ throats
Aren’t worth the trees crushed in the mills for wasted paper votes
If we cannot learn the lesson that the ancient travellers teach
The horizon is a promised land that lives beyond our reach

When spring upon the promised land has turned a bitter cold
And the mightiest of structures is built with bricks of old
And finished riches when the wealth has moved away
The prize is still ahead of us, the game is yet to play

And more and more the pieces, and the tools are changing fast
The rules get further left behind, the only things that last
Are the wisdom of the traveller, the raven flying free
The wind across the desert and the gale upon the sea

And all those through the ages who strove to get it right
So we reach out for the promised land, not destroy it in the fight
And the wiser heads keep travelling
Into the deepening night.