It was the world after the Flood
a Shangri-la of dripping flowers
Of pungent soil and sparkling leaves
where minutes were as long as hours

I sang the music of the birds
and sighed as one with all the trees
I breathed the winds and wept the rain
and lived the rhythm of the seas

But childhood passed; life wrenched me from
the velvet womb of Mother Earth
The golden cord was sundered that
had bound me to Her since my birth

They stuffed my head with formulae
put cogs and wheels inside my brain
Till I began to think that I
would never smell a rose again

And when I delved into a flower
to search the reaches of its heart
I'd eye it through a jeweller's loupe
to **** and pick the thing apart

I'd pine in towers of hothouse glass
and wither slowly from within
For here the birds could not be heard
above the town's infernal din

Now I'd have given all the stars
to find once more that childhood Me
Like Tantalus I thirsted for
the waters of my Mother Sea

The waves of lapislazuli
and sands of crumbling honeycomb
The sulphur tang, the murmuring conch
the fish that swished beneath the foam!

Where mermaid queens had golden hair
and silver tails instead of legs
And shell-encrusted diadems
with pearls the size of darning eggs

And then there were the drowsing woods-
the wistful doves and droning bees
Elysian streams that trickled softly
In the shadow of the trees

Where summer air was sumptuous
as thick as musk and just as sweet,
where,after picnics, we would nap
like bluebells drooping in the heat.

And so I searched for Shangri-La-----