Desolation Is the Soul

The towns along the high line fall,
Abandoned as they were settled,
Within a few decades or so,
Within a long lifetime, at most.

Is it due to too few people
Inhabiting the world? Absurd.
The world is still more overrun
Than when those waves of settlers swarmed.

How to eat, how to make money,
Those are the things that have moved on.
What kind of fool would scrape grass now
Off a few acres for straw corn?

Still, it’s a different emptiness,
Dotted with hollow-eyed houses,
Where settlers have grazed and moved on
From grasslands full of life alone.