The Orange Monkey

A restlessness took hold my brain And questions I could not hold back An orange monkey on a chain On a bleak uneven track Told me that to understand You must travel back time I took a plane to a foreign land And said, "I'll write down what I find" Beneath a mountain's jagged shelves Cloaked with snow and shadows sheer Plates tipped up upon themselves The pain of fifty million years And mules and goats were running wild A happy chaos carried on And old men and the young boys smiled And worked until the day was gone The packs of sandy-coloured dogs Walked streets that looked like building sites But piles of rocks and dust and smog Could not block out a different light When I returned I ran to meet The monkey, but his face had changed He stood before me on two feet The track was now a motorway