The World Goes On

I wrote this poem towards the end of December 2013, It originally had three stanzas (1,2,4), but I decided to put it to music and added the third stanza in April 2014. I needed two stanzas for a single verse in the music. The extra text at the end are the words I used for a chorus, although you really need the tune for the relevant rhythm.

The World Goes On

Five hundred and eighty-five million miles:
A long way to go in a year,
But planet earth goes its elliptical way,
Retracing its course as it does ev’ry day,
The passengers carried inside – so blasé,
Ignoring the great atmosphere.

Two thousand and fourteen years now on the clock:
A service is long overdue,
Yet planet earth’s journey’s just goes on and on,
It just goes straight round (that’s an oxymoron) –
Well, it doesn’t care when the fossil fuel’s gone,
It’s never too tired, right on cue.

Remember that others were here long ago
Before we as primates evolved,
But fossils are all that there is we can see
Of life from that time long before you and me:
The dinosaurs wiped out irrelevantly
Whilst planet earth simply revolved.

So here we are now – it’s another new year:
The calendar that we have made.
The world is oblivious to our own flaws,
The starving, intolerance, greed causing wars,  
Our choice how we handle these things, mine and yours;
The world just goes on, unallayed.

Extra words for chorus

The world goes on, and on and on
It will continue ev’ry year. To make it clear,
It will go on, after we’re gone.
It will not care that we were here.