SHIELDWALL UPDATE: or, THEY GOT US FROM BEHIND (Tune: "Song of the Shieldwall") Hasten, commuters, on to the platform, Three minutes late for the nine-thirty-two. For offices crammed into concrete skyscrapers Demand daily tribute from me and from you. Work till your eyes and your brain cry in torment, Run for the train through the rain and the cold, Then home to the house that was built by permission On land that no man nor no woman can hold. Hasten, truckdriver, down the M20, Bound for a warehouse to pick up some stuff. The food has been treated to keep it from spoiling-- It's not cost-effective to make just enough. Once there was winter and seed-time and harvest, Once there was pasture and pigsty and fold, But now food production is handled by robots, On land that a big corporation will hold. Hasten, O bigwigs, down to the shelter, The warning's gone out and the bombs they will fall. What use now the sword or the shield or the buckler? The cruel radiation brings death to us all. In five hundred years, give or take maybe fifty, The sheltered descendants will break through the mould, And stand 'neath a ster-ile sky mutely gazing On land that's not fit for aught living to hold!