You will ask why my poetry
speaks of leaves and green rivers
and that family of goosanders
spinning and diving and drifting downstream
on the ebb-tide this rainy morning.
Where are the unemployed? You ask,
the litter, the broken windows,
graffiti curse-words and allegations,
the lost generation, the hope of revolution?
You will ask why my portrait is so pretty,
all those woodlands and winter skies,
when jobs are scarce and art is strangled
and freedom is bought and sold with oil.
In those fields we have no lapwings,
no hares, a stillness of yellow rape,
and wheat after barley after wheat.
The Skylark song is quenched in rain.
The moon rises over green absence.
Once there were bitterns in these woods --
salmon, kingfisher, tufted duck,
children at the village school -- all gone.
We wash the guilt of extinction off our hands.
Oh see the blood of extinction on our hands!
From Dark Mountain, Issue 4, summer 2013
Also see, www.dark-mountain.net
