The Iron Dominion

A vast and cold dominion rises where once the earth breathed free,  
An empire forged of iron, indifferent as the void,  
Spreading its blackened shadow over all that lives.  
It ascends, monstrous, built by hands that forgot their place,  
Hands that tore at the veins of the earth to fashion their own chains.  
See the Machine, mindless and vast, devouring the world it can never understand,  
Its teeth of steel gnashing through mountains, through forests, through the very flesh of the wild.  
This is the world you have made: a graveyard of iron and glass,  
Where the pulse of life is choked beneath the clatter of gears,  
Where the rivers run thick with poison, and the sky is strangled in smoke.  
The earth beneath your feet is broken and bleeding,  
And you, who once walked with the wolves and spoke with the stars,  
Now cower beneath the cold hum of the wires you’ve strung across the heavens.

You crowned yourselves the masters of the earth,  
But now you kneel before the beast you built,  
A hollow god of circuits and flame,  
A soulless titan that neither sleeps nor dreams.  
It feeds on life, on blood, on the breath of the world,  
Reducing all it touches to ash,  
Grinding the bones of the living into dust to fuel its endless hunger.  
You have stripped the earth bare,  
Plundered her forests, razed her mountains,  
Drained her rivers and poisoned her seas,  
All to feed this monstrous thing you call progress.  
And now you are its slaves, shackled to its gears,  
Your souls mere shadows in its ceaseless grind.

The sky, once full of light and song, is now a barren wasteland,  
Where the sun is veiled in fumes and the stars are blotted out.  
No more do eagles soar on wings of fire,  
No more do wolves call to the moon across the plains,  
For the air itself has turned to poison,  
And the beasts of the earth, once proud and free,  
Are hunted, slaughtered, driven from their homes,  
Their bones ground down to feed your ravenous machines.  
You have turned the wild places into deserts of glass and steel,  
Where nothing lives, where nothing breathes,  
Where the wind itself is a ghost,  
Wandering through the ruins of what once was paradise.

The forests fall beneath the axe,  
Their ancient boughs reduced to timber, to ash, to fuel for the fires of your factories.  
The rivers, once clear as crystal, are now black with waste,  
Their waters tainted with death,  
While the creatures that once drank from their depths lie dead upon their banks.  
You have made the earth a wasteland,  
A barren tomb where only the cold hum of the Machine is heard,  
Drowning out the songs of the birds,  
The cries of the wolves, the whispers of the trees.  
And you call this progress, this endless destruction,  
This relentless march toward death and despair.

What madness drove you to this?  
What hubris led you to believe that you could conquer the earth,  
That you could bend her to your will and strip her of her soul?  
You are but a fleeting breath,  
A momentary flicker in the vastness of time,  
And yet you have unleashed a force that knows no bounds,  
A force that devours all in its path,  
Reducing the living world to a wasteland of concrete and steel.  
You have severed the sacred bond between man and earth,  
The bond that once nourished you, that once gave you life.  
Now you stand alone,  
Enslaved by the very thing you sought to control.

And what of the beasts, the creatures of the wild?  
What of the lions that once roared upon the plains,  
The bears that roamed the forests,  
The eagles that soared above the mountains?  
They are gone, hunted to extinction,  
Their bones crushed beneath the weight of your machines.  
The last wolf lies dying in the dust,  
Her blood seeping into the poisoned earth,  
Her eyes, once bright with the fire of life,  
Now dull with the shadow of death.  
She is the last of her kind,  
A ghost in a world that no longer belongs to her.

The mountains, once immovable and eternal,  
Are now torn apart, their bones scattered across the plains,  
Their peaks leveled to feed the insatiable hunger of your factories.  
The forests, once dark and deep, are now nothing but ash,  
Their ancient trees reduced to fuel for your fires.  
The rivers, once full of life, now run thick with death,  
Their waters poisoned by the waste of your machines.  
The oceans, once vast and untamed,  
Now choke on plastic, on oil,  
On the detritus of your relentless progress.  
And still you build,  
Still you create,  
Still you consume.

But what will be left when the last tree falls,  
When the last river runs dry,  
When the last wolf howls her final breath?  
What will you have gained,  
When all that remains is the hollow shell of a world once full of life?  
You have traded the living earth for a world of iron and steel,  
For a world where nothing grows,  
Where nothing breathes,  
Where nothing lives.

And yet the earth endures,  
She waits, silent and patient,  
Her heart beating deep beneath the scars you’ve carved into her flesh.  
She will rise again,  
When the last of your machines has crumbled to rust,  
When your cities have turned to dust,  
When your towers have fallen and your roads have cracked.  
She will rise, and she will reclaim what is hers,  
Her forests will grow where your factories once stood,  
Her rivers will flow where your roads once ran,  
Her creatures will return to the places you have laid waste.

And you, O man,  
You will be nothing but a shadow,  
A ghost wandering through the ruins of your own creation,  
A forgotten whisper on the wind.  
You will have no place in the world you have destroyed,  
No home in the earth you have defiled.  
The wolves will not mourn you,  
The eagles will not sing your name,  
The trees will not remember you.  
For you have chosen to forsake the earth,  
And in doing so,  
You have forsaken yourself.

This is your legacy,  
The iron dominion you have built,  
A world of machines, of death,  
A world where the very air is poison,  
Where the earth is barren and the seas are dead.  
This is the fruit of your hubris,  
The price of your so-called progress.  
And when the last of your kind is gone,  
The earth will breathe again,  
The wild places will grow,  
And the beasts will roam free.  

But you will not be there to see it.  
You will be gone,  
A fleeting memory in the bones of the earth,  
A moment of madness,  
A brief flicker of fire that burned too hot and too bright,  
Only to consume itself in the end.