Through The Eyes of a Child

Through The Eyes of a Child

Grandma, show me the photos of you as a girl
The big factory chimneys with black smoking curl
The noisy machinery blasting your ears
Dust clouding your eyes and welling up tears
Show me tall mountains touching the skies
A world disappearing in front of your eyes

Grandma, tell me the stories of you as a child
Running so free and running so wild
In meadows of green bursting with flowers
Making chains out of daisies for hours and hours
Tell me of summers of days in the sun
Long sandy beaches on which you did run

Grandma, where is the book full of creatures and birds?
Picture on picture and words upon words
Describing those animals most of them gone
Those that were tiny and those that were strong
What were they called? Please tell me their name
Why have they all gone and who was to blame?

Grandma, what happened to the world of your youth?
Please give me a reason, please tell me the truth
Was it the motor car polluting the air?
Was it great nations who just didn’t care?
Let me sit on your knee and hear you explain
What really did cause all that acid to rain?

Grandma, where is the world that you promised to save?
That land of the free that land of the brave
Where are the towering hills once standing proud?
Where even the small could stand out in the crowd
How did it happen? Where has it all gone?
Did you just stand there whilst all this went on?

Grandma, please tell me I can’t understand
Why there’s so much sea and so little land
Will I have to grow fins and live in the sea?
Grandma, what is going to happen to me?
So many questions are making me wild
As I see the world through the eyes of a child

©Marian Barker