There is no place in the upper kingdom Not blighted with plague and famine The bones of corpses stripped of flesh litter our towns The desert reclaims the land Corrupt winds of pestilence and contagion Sicken the air with piteous lamentations of despair No living creature great or small is safe from the starving and the desperate Decades of drought Seven years without rain or annual flood The black earth is in ruins, cursing the unfed masses Reserves of grain exhausted Cities choked with sand Roving hordes of the starving and emaciated Scour the streets for what scraps they can scavenge Even insects and vermin fear to tread our cities Starving humans migrate like swarms of locusts Eating carrion corpses dogs, human excrement, animal dung The poor are forced to commit unheard of atrocities Noble women beg to become slaves and whores Children are dashed against walls Infants are roasted on high ground Those entombed are unearthed Violating the royal dead What the pyramid concealed is defiled Lawlessness unchecked, chaos unopposed The land is deprived of kingship No refuge for the old the young The weak the malnourished The diseased sick who are left along to die As the just and unjust alike descend into wickedness And ravenously turn on each other The age of famine is upon us