Crudius woke up when a comet
rocked his chamber and his hall.
He found up on the open fields
carcases of an eon's worth
of life wiped out by fire.

He greedily gathered fruitful harvest
to his caverns underground.
There he lit himself a fire
and put them in the kettle room.

Crudius stirred till all became
as black as carbon, raw and sweet.
He left his experimental stew
to liquify and to purify,
to cover all the deepest pits
and to wait till new life begun.
Then Crudius went to sleep.

Surely, he did not wait long
till rambling men begun to dig
a generous well an inch too deep
it scraped the very roofs of hell.
Once more was Crudius rudely woken
by the discourse from above:
"We have found ourselves a slave
whom we might work to fill our sleeves".

He let a sinister smile dance a while
on his enterprising face.
Then let himself be siphoned
from the pits to slave for them.

They set him first upon their farms,
They spoiled their kids with plastic toys.
He gave the miner and the banker
gold and inelastic joy.

Crudius was their mighty servant;
worked till he was all but spent.
When he saw his time was ripe,
and all his masters plump and bent,
He choked them with a carbon cloud
and steamed them in their living rooms.
A few escaped, but many more
could not even dig their graves.

He took their bodies and their wealth
and sent them to his deepest caverns
where he set his stove on fire
and cooked till all became like coal.

Then Crudius sent them further down
to liquify and purify,
and on the surface, nature once
again was free from meddling men.

That sly god, Crudius bid his time
till there came again another man
whom he could tempt to dig a well
and lift his oil straight from hell

To work the fields and factories
and build his castles and his halls.

Then he too will discover wealth
and plunder himself to destruction,
so that the god will gather round
the fruitful harvest for the next
enticing round of "Dig a well".