When I was a boy I wanted to shoot elephants like all the great men did;
the dream to hunt in wildest Africa for all the wonders that it hid.
To ride across the Serengeti and see those mighty herds
was an adventure of a lifetime; more than could be put in words.
Back then the herds were massive; they filled that mighty plain.
Now in a single generation of a world that’s gone insane
they’re driven to extinction by gluttony not need
by a world that’s driven onward by never-ending greed.
The wonders of my childhood world I know will be no more
for we developed great new weapons and for nature it is war!
No more the simple fisherman and the net so deftly cast.
Now miles and miles of driftnet snaring everything it passed.
And elephants rot in thousands, murdered for an evil trade
while we look on in ‘innocence’ at the disaster we have made.
We’ve occupied the whole wide world; in our image it is built
and upon that stagnant cesspool so much blood has been spilt.
But our world runs ever forward, like Lemmings to the drop
and no one seems to listen when the wise ones bellow “Stop!”