December 31, 2019

I sit in one of the dives
On Katoomba Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the political hopes expire
On a low dishonest decade:
Waves of smoke and fear
Circulate over the hazy
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obscuring our private lives;
The unmistakable odour of fire
Offends the December night.

Careful research can
Prove the whole offence
From Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin
Until now  a science driven mad.
What happened in Madrid
The great crime of delay
A psychopathic ideology.
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil and deceit is done
Will rise in anger and revolt.

Exiled Thunberg knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy and Science,
And what pretend dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic population;
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The air conditioning must always hum,
All the media conspire
To make this seem obvious
The fake prosperous future;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a burning wood.

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The ignorant lie in the brain
Of the average person-in-the-street
And the lie of corporate power
Whose buildings grope the sky:
This goes far beyond the State
And no one exists alone;
Climate allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love the Earth or die.


With apologies to W. H Auden and ‘September 1, 1939’