Poetry

Nature’s Knell

On 2020 May 15th by monty

The world was gold chaotic beauty, born beneath our star,

Filled with life; a fruitful, free utopia.

Once the endless bliss of Eden shone and rode

And met itself, an endless reach around the globe.

This natural perfection bore us all by its selection,

But this world so great and generous has not been treated so by us.

Consider summers long before, of sorts that simply are no more,

And think what world we have in store,

Now thought is strong, but knowledge poor.

Rolling fields, patrolling gelds and newborn foals,

Controlling mothers stop their strolling goals,

Keeping close to hedge and post.

Make the most of summer’s roast,

Of nature’s bounty: bold and verdant greens,

As reams of berries cascade in beams

And fruit falls fresh and full from trees.

The hanging garden pantries of the sun,

Stored on stems and stuck to thickets.

Thick and overflowing, ripe and round,

Above, beneath, entwined within the ground,

A temporary feast, to summer bound.

The country, great and limited,

Its festival of flavour and freedom

Doomed to fester betwixt towns

And cities, moors and downs

Replaced by pace and pavement.

These places meant for sight and scent,

Relent and bow, shrink to crawl

From cold urban sprawl

That spreads its dead concrete feet,

Laden with cabling and smog,

And clogging smoke.

The trees, broke,

The forest folk

Are acid-soaked

And choked.

The ever-shrinking beauty of this country,

Counting out the last of its days.

The final rays of sunlight from a rare blue sky

That looks from high at fallen trees

And taller breeze-block towers,

Overpowering the natural order,

Pushing its borders and burrowing hollow

The earth and hearth and homeland,

Grey sand and metal racks, and endless tracks

Connecting these abhorrent beastly capitals,

These bastions of humanity’s self-satisfied societies.

Identical and dire dins of darkened light and dilute sins,

Humongous gouges in the land of brick and steel

And sick, unfeeling progress for the modern man.

The real beauty of the land is only fleeting,

Flying by the windowed seating of the trains

And planes and metal frames that people occupy

To fly between their sprawling scapes.

Appaling japes and nature-raping bliss

That is metropolis. This man-made kiss goodnight,

As chimneys smother out day-light

And highway-brightness kills the night.

Entrapped inside these grey societies,

Man has frozen grass and trees;

Stripped and strangled growths

Lost from healthy soil-host,

Suck deathly fumes instead of balmy breeze.

These final resting stops of gods’ landmarks,

Aptly named in stalling, stagnant ‘parks’;

Parked in stone and sewer and foil,

Forgotten memories of stream and soil.

We plant our trees and lazily commit

To fix this world, no longer blindly sit

And watch the jungles fade or arctics fall.

We kick a fuss and heed to nature’s call,

But what the use if we are few, not all?

We are losing the one mother we all share,

Because our wiser elders did not care,

And now we human earth-disease

No longer sees the wood, from lack of trees.