A Memory of Dust

I can but dream of better days,

When water dared escape from sky.

Before the dust, famine, and drought,

Before the time of the Big Dry.

...

I remember when this land had beauty,

When green was there in place of brown.

I remember cities full of life,

Remember home, not a ghost town.

...

But memory is not like dust,

And dust is carried through the air.

What is left within this land,

But a present of death, drought, despair?

...

Perhaps the time has come to leave,

For those countries with a wetter clime.

But for now, all is but dust,

Live as ghosts of fast forgotten time.