Age of Famine

There is no place in the upper kingdom

not blighted with plague and famine

The bones of corpses stripped of flesh litter our towns

The desert reclaims the land

Corrupt winds of pestilence and contagion

Sicken the air with piteous lamentations of despair

No living creature great or small is safe from the starving and the desperate

Decades of drought

Seven years without rain or annual flood

The black earth is in ruins, cursing the unfed masses

Reserves of grain exhausted

Cities choked with sand

Roving hordes of the starving and emaciated

Scour the streets for what scraps they can scavenge

Even insects and vermin fear to tread our cities

Starving humans migrate like swarms of locusts

Eating carrion corpses dogs, human excrement, animal dung

The poor are forced to commit unheard of atrocities

Noble women beg to become slaves and whores

Children are dashed against walls

Infants are roasted on high ground

Those entombed are unearthed

Diolating the royal dead

What the pyramid concealed is defiled

Lawlessness unchecked, chaos unopposed

The land is deprived of kingship

No refuge for the old the young

The weak the malnourished

The diseased sick who are left along to die

As the just and unjust alike descend into wickedness

And ravenously turn on each other

The age of famine is upon us