The relationship between the urban and rural has been a kind of fuse for the long explosion of history.  It may be that this subject will take over the next few years of my life.  As so often with my enthusiasms, it has tunnelled into the area of life concerned with music and song - in this case the following lyric has emerged, which says it all in about the smallest possible word count.

The honest miller

Grass and green and grow:
In the morning of the World -
Grass and green and grow -
Past the far shore of the Middle Ocean -
Grass and green and grow -
There the Fertile Crescent curled;
Grass and green and grow.

Oat and rye and choke:
Weeds transfigured into crops.
Oat and rye and choke:
Gatherers bend daily to their labour -
Oat and rye and choke -
To pluck the grain before it drops;
Oat and rye and choke.

Groat and bran and germ:
Green to gold the listening wheat -
Groat and bran and germ -
Pricks its ears for signs of black sclerotia.
Groat and bran and germ:
A dancing madman crowned with cheat.
Groat and bran and germ.

Bread and cake and ale:
Bison-like the City stumbles -
Bread and cake and ale -
Indiscriminate through blighted landscapes.
Bread and cake and ale:
Bloats and gorges as it crumbles.
Bread and cake and ale.

Grass and green and grow:
Who can tell the flour from filler?
Oat and rye and choke:
Corn and cockle fall to scythe and combine -
Groat and bran and germ -
Earmarked for an honest miller,
Bread and cake and ale.

In the end the weeds return.
Finally the works of mankind fail.