Timothy Lawton

10/14/1997

If paradise were found

Man would be sure to lose it again and again

If some how, some way

Some magnificent continent still lay in some hidden corner of the earth

Or, if it chose to rise from the bottom of the sea

We would be doomed to repeat history

It’s pristine waters teeming with life would be dredged with nets

Its’ lush woods and cathedral forests would be seen as timber

And its’ primitive people would be thought to be in need of our civilization

Business ventures would be planned and schemes hatched

Hotels and resorts would be designed and investments matched

And it would start all over again

Whether it be on Earth, the Moon, Mars or deep in outer space

The only thing that might be different this time

Is that man could no longer countenance it being done in God’s name

But not out some lesson we have come to understand

But rather by the pride we have in our own minds and greedy hands

No thoughts of a Utopia would exist this time

Just cold hearted calculations counting nickels and dimes

The natives would be considered for loans from the World Bank and IMF

And when they couldn’t pay we’d teach them how to work to pay off their debts

In a few millenium

And maybe by then man may have learned

That paradise is made of straw and easily burned

But, somehow I seem to believe that

Man would be sure to lose it if he found it again and again

From now until the day that this life ends