Once you had garden of Eden.  
 Now you have this.  
 A playpen in the desert. Bliss.  
 Here, 5,000 years of civilization  
 Can be experienced in an instant.   
 Have a nice day. Enjoy.  
 For in a flash it could all be over.  

Kings, emperors, deities,  
 Craven images cast in plaster, neon lit.  
 Look on my works,  
 Ye mighty, and despair.  
 The smell of money in the air,  
 A tawdry son-et-lumiere.  

Your immortals are mortal, they were once flesh and blood.   
 Escape the delusion, the noise and pollution  
 The true immortals are made out of wood.  
 They call us bristlecone pines.  
 They call me Methuselah.  

Methuselah, Methuselah this human  
 christens me, for he has counted  
 the candles on my cake... 4,600.  
 Am celebrity now, and no mistake.  
 Am named. Am given voice.  
 The years, like necklaces bestow  
 a wisdom, humankind can never know.  
 Millennia, they come and go.  
 Have no eyes, but have seen it all.  
 Ancient civilizations that you can  
 Only read about, Methuselah has sensed.  
 Am not part of history... No,  
 history is parts of me.  

Unlike words, tree rings never lie.  
 One year was freezing cold and dark  
 The sun was hidden in the sky  
 I tasted brimstone and it left its mark  
 Like a noose tightening, like a charred wreath.  
 What is this thing, I thought, called death?  

You can read me like a book  
 Open me up and take a look:  
 History laid bare, a garland here  
 a crown there. Plain as a pikestaff  
 for all to see. Each year jotted down by me.  
 The state of the nation, an annual report  
 in ever decreasing circles. The wheels  
 of fortune, the cycles of despair.  

If I had lungs I would be coughing  
 A throat, I would be parched  
 If I had eyes they would be stinging  
 Flesh, it would be scorched.  
 
Sulfur, smoke and cinders  
 enfold me like a shroud  
 There is no silver lining  
 only poison in this cloud.  

Water, water everywhere and not a drop...  
 To think that down there, battery trees  
 Like plumped up turkeys stand proud and vain.  
 Bloated and unaware that they are but a switch's  
 throw away from death.  

Water, water not forever...  
 For twenty-four hours a day, fountains play,  
 Spraying graffiti that mocks a desert kept at bay.  

But nature has a way of saying "Enough."  
 After the pride there comes the fall  
 After the boom, the bust.  
 Remember man that thou art dust,  
 And unto dust...  

Men drop to the earth like leaves  
 Lives as brief as footprints in snow.  
 Bristlecones enthroned on top of the world  
 Watch civilizations come and go.  
 They seek our secret, immortality,  
 But search in vain, for it is vanity.  
 If truth be known I would rather  
 be a flower, or a leaf that lives  
 and breathes with brief intensity.  
 My life is as thin as the wind  
 And I am done with counting stars.  
 On the side of this mountain  
 I might live forever.  
 Could you imagine anything worse?  
 My name is Methuselah and this is my curse.  

From http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2817methuselah.html