Once a
riverran
Like cord of
grey churning muscle,
Through a
valley
And a city.
Current
rolling, pulsing and twisting muddy waters
To the sea
and back again at the same time
Running with
and against the tide,
Like the
city, it never ceased,
On cold
winter nights, it sweated mist;
But, if the
night was still,
The mist
could not rise.
Every house
in the city burnt a coal fire,
Nearly every
adult who lived there smoked,
And then
there was a time
When all the
cars, buses and lorries
Smoked too.
Smog was born
And the mist
and smog embraced each other
And lay down
like satisfied lovers
In a sleeping
yellow embrace
Above the
city,
Smothering breath
and life in a poisonous blanket
So every
still night when the smog laid down
Hundreds died
beneath.
“Give us
clean air!”, the people cried
“Stop the
coalfires!,
And clean
the car exhausts!
Stop smoking!
Cut carbon monoxide!”
Then the old
smog, made illegal died,
And fewer
people did.
But death
was just resting for a decade or two,
Then it
smiled and said:
“I’ll find a
way to return,
And choke
the life from your lungs and heads;
I’ll make a finer blanket now
Than the
smog of old
And when the
sun is bright
And the air
is still,
I’ll weave a
cloth of car fumes,
And light
And lay it
over the city
So that they’ll
gasp for breath and cough in vain,
Again and
again,
Just like
they did when my smog was thick
My clear
killing veil
Will hang
invisible above the city
So they’ll still
die for me
As the river
rolls on and on
And passes
the poisoned people by.
