In a land beyond the rainbow
Stands a dark decrepit wood
Where monkeys glide between the branches
And witches live, both bad and good
There within its tangled branches
Lies a path bedecked with gold
Leading brave souls who do not blanch
On to wonders yet untold
Near this path of yellow mortar
Stands an ancient half hewn tree
Missing wood, about a quarter
Standing **** for all to see
In this wood there stands a hatchet
Once beloved, now fraught with rage
Just another rusted gadget
Cast by in the wake of age
On a gnarled and twisted root
Centered in a mushroom ring
Stands ***** a metal figure
Frozen ever in mid-swing
There he stands through frozen winters
There he stands through summer's heat
There he stands through April showers
Standing ever on his feet
Once he glowed a gentle pewter
Once he moved with solemn grace
Lines of rust bedeck his figure
Streaking slowly down his face
Once he stood a man of flesh
A simple hewer of the wood
Who held a cabin near the creek
And loved a maiden fair and good
In the village near the forest
There he sought to win her hand
A debt of love he'd pay with interest
If beside his side she'd stand
In the woods he sought the bride price
Needed to start their new life
In the trees he found the journey
Soon to be defined by strife
By an elm his axehead sundered
Cleaving cruelly through his arm
Through the boughs his loud cry thundered
To the heavens in alarm
To the ground his lost arm plopped
Landing softly with a thump
To the town the woodsmen hopped
Grasping at the ****** stump
There he found the village tinker
And roused him roughly from his bed
Dragging him out to the workshop
Leaking out a wake of red
There he begged the wizened workman
'Make a new arm from your cans
For i marry in a fortnight
Let my bride take a whole man'
So the old man plied his trade
To make a limb of springs and gears
Twisting tendons in a braid
To move his fingers through the years
Now renewed to former vigor
The Woodsman went back to his trade
Returning to the morning's rigor
Back into the ancient glade
Little did the doughty hewer
Know his axe contained a curse
Stricken on unknowing users
Causing their limbs to disperse
By an oak he lost his left ear
By a beech he lost the right
Hazel took him down a peg
And by a yew he lost his sight
Through the week the tinker labored
On in a rush to replace
Just enough of the woodcutter
To accept his bride's embrace
On the day his nuptials dawned
The woodsman clanged into the square
Passing through the crowd with awe
On to meet his maiden fair
There she stood beneath a trellis
Sky blue ribbons through her braids
Oh, she was a sight to rellish
Worth the trial of the glades
There he stood forever altered
A shadow of the former man
In this form forever haltered
To this shell of springs and cans
The cutter broke into a dash
To wrap his woman in his arms
On the cobbles his feet clashed
Causing her no small alarm
From the altar his bride fled
With screams of terror in her wake
On the day he should have wed
Became the day his heart did break
Suddenly devoid of purpose
To the copse the woodsman flees
Never ere' again to surface
From the shelter of the trees
Months went by the woodsman toiled
Day and night, no pause to sleep
Day and night his kettle boiled
Over with the urge to weep
Till the sound of April thunder
Rumbled in the cutters ears
Bringing rain that tore assunder
Dams he'd built around his tears
So between his swings he wept
Of loss and of abandoned trust
Trails of tears in his joints crept
And hardened slowly into rust
Now he stands in frozen duty
Saplings rising all around
Dreaming of an ancient beauty
Long surrendered to the ground
Till the day another maid
Returns to bathe his limbs in oil
On that day he'll leave the glade
Moving on to other toils
Then the rust begins to part
Then the magic starts to slake
Then the woodsman finds his heart
Then the Tin Man starts to wake