Interpret:

Oi Polloi

Album:

Fuaim catha!

How can you buy or sell the sky? 
The warmth of the land? 
The idea is strange to us. 
If we do not own the freshness of the air 
And the sparkle of the water
How can you buy them? 
Every part of the earth is scared to my people  Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore
Every mist in the dark woods, every clearing 
And humming insect is holy in our memory 
And experience. 
The sap which courses through 
The trees carries our memories 
We are part of the earth and it is part of us. 
We know that the white man 
Does not understand our ways
One portion of the land is the same 
To him as the next, for he is a stranger 
Who comes in the night 
And takes whatever he needs. 
The earth is not his brother but his enemy 
And when he has conquered it he moves on. 
He leaves his father's graves behind 
And he does not care.
He kidnaps the earth birthright are forgotten. 
He treats his mother the earth 
And his father the sky as things 
To be bought, plundered or sold like sheep 
Or bright beads. 
His appetite will devour the earth 
And leave behind only a desert. 
I do not know. 
Our ways are different from your ways. 
The sight of your cities pains my eyes. 
There is no quiet place in the white man's cities
No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring Or the rustle of an insects wings. 
The clatter only seems to insult the ears
And what is there to life in one cannot hear 
The lonely cry of the Lapwing or the arguments 
Of the frogs around a pond at night? 
What is man without other animals? 
If all the beasts were gone
Man would die from a great loneliness of spirit. 
For whatever happens to the beasts 
Soon happens to man
All things are connected. 
Teach your children 
What we have taught our children: 
That the Earth is our mother. 
Whatever befalls the Earth 
Befalls the sons and daughters of the Earth. 
Man did not weave the web of life
He is merely a strand of it. 
Whatever he does to the web he does to himself. 


The secret corners of the forest 
Are heavy with the scent of many men. 
Where is the thicket? Gone. 
Where is the eagle? Gone. 
The end of living - and the beginning of survival...