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Clean World
Barren are the forests they once roamed
their foliage denuded, giants felled
once where branches spread their matted chests
today only lonesome clearings remain
their baldness covered in silver spider mist
Days waken now to distant buzz of saws
retreating armies of insistent wasps
motors protesting between metallic coughs
the last surviving monsters topple and are still
Quarries have eaten into hills
armies of caterpillars have devoured the green
overnight masked surgeons have shoveled yellow dust
into trucks and trailers purloined from sap and ore
All this they said to prolong expectancy of life
in steel and glass caverns underground
where sterile beings might shelter from pollution
and ultraviolet malignancy cannot reach
There they now huddle, exhausted cannibals
and listen to the music of Mozart and Mendelssohn
who died at thirty in some unprotected loft
while plague and pox lurked unwashed streets
They sing their hymns, alternating their praise
to dynasties of insecticide and dung
© Johnmichael Simon
2014
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