The Cost Of Living

Lyrics for The Cost Of Living

Once we made our home in the trees Lived innocent, vicious, free 'Til our souls hung thick on the boughs The rent went up, we got squeezed out Fanning out on empty russet plains We scored channels into the clay Scheming to siphon the rivers and rains Longing for lushness and somewhere to stay Then bodies of martyrs swelled the headwaters Then dust bloomed where our lifesblood once guttered Then black rot hollowed out our crops and our daughters Then the land's lords made their offer: bondage or slaughter So it's time to move house again Hauling our memories over the mountains And seas, to some other benighted land For space to subdue, a new life at a bargain Where we'll take whatever we need To live is to lust; progeny demands greed But by time's cruel hand, we're reborn again as lessees On farms, in cities, in factories The settings keep shifting, the gentry's names change But the tale and our role are always the same Tomorrow's eviction: the price we're born to pay Possession's iron law, the timeless tenant's way And now the ground shifts under our feet And our debts shadow us into our sleep So that we never rest, we just slave for a seat At the table of gold, as if we're not the feast Like cattle we are butchered, like kings they will eat For the landless and luckless are such easy meat And the cost of our living will only increase