The Cost of Living Lyrics

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