Lead in the water, mercury in the air.
Too late! I hear that phrase my old love made
That taunted and that sombred and that died
On bell waves that still rock this boat,
This head. We work against such menace
Of far thunder. Each night we hear the birds,
The elephants, we see the birds all slicked
In oil, the elephants uprooting trees for water
And thousands, count them, will be shot.
Lead in the air and mercury in water …
Our Second Revolution’s brought us this.
Those children first who worked sixteen hours a day
For their own good, so cotton capitalists said.
Ours now, we thrash in, made fat-headed
By computers, the huge and stunting. And who said:
“Over-population, over-organization”?
By this or not we lessen and we lust
The more for moon-landings, a way of death.
Escape artists, fed on swill,
Wanting more and more, forever more.
Not one “improvement” will we let go by,
Still cuddling picture postcards of the ideal,
Our hamstrung set, our soiled state
Led by the automated hypocrite. Years like this
Of miles on square miles of the mangrove acres
Of dense-leafed forests as leafless now
As if an atom bomb had cleaned them down to stone.
But who will judge the victor? Might’s still right
In this our swollen pigsfoot of a state.
Lead in the Water
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