Button Question

Someday an odd looking man may come down in a rocket ship.

Swooping low, he’ll stop at any big city in the States.

He’ll walk around town and visit every building

And when he has seen everything, he’ll have to stop and ask:

“Where is it that all the people are?

This world isn’t anything more

Than a row of green buttons

Each saying ‘GO’

And another row of red buttons saying

‘STOP’.

But on the hill I see graveyards,

All grown over and unattended now.

I went up the hill to the top

And peered down upon the city

With the dead.

“I went off one year in my rocket ship.

While I was gone, the scientists were busy.

They came upon the ultimate discovery.

They found how to make things so efficient

There were no people left here to greet me.

But perhaps it’s lucky that I’ve survived,

Because in all the world there’s one job left.

“Machines quiet and still and waiting,

With the same expectation for food as

Any glutton.

Are hoping for a man of my education,

One man left who knows how to push a

Green button.

“And may it never wear

Nor need repair,

Because in a decade

I’ll be dead,

And if I’m gone

And it goes wrong

And lights up danger,

Who’ll push the button

                                                                         Red?"