A Bi-Centenary Poem
Fear no more the heat o’ the sun
-its rays are filtered, every one.
The fumes from car-exhausts and fires
from dumps and furnaces aspires
to poison heaven where the bird
sings on a diminished third
or totters from the well-sprayed tree
replete with years and DDT.
Now nature grinds her basic gears,
the big-end knocks, the junk-yard nears…
Now fish float belly-up downstream caught
by chemicals too vague to be fought,
the forests sigh and fall, the hills
blink baldly as the new winds chills,
the grasslands waver and are gone,
the concrete Nothing blunders on,
black gold fountains to the sky,
the sands are mined, the sea-coasts die,
the land runs ruin to our pride!
Lord, give us, for our patricide,
two hundred more years like the last
and what shall then withstand the blast?