Global Pollution

This poem, about global pollution, was written in the 1950s, long before the term “global warming” was in common usage:

 

THOUGHTS FROM THE BOSTON POST ROAD

 

                           By Lewis Turco

 

Today ten thousand vehicles have passed

              In cursing columns down the nearby Post

Road, left that sparrow on the billboard gassed

              Whose muddled instincts panic to the west

              Beyond the screws and monkey-wrenches tossed

       From mobile windows.  But the west is east,

       And east is south, and south is north at least.

 

The land is shot for sparrows, shot for men.

              But for machines it's Paradise on Wheels!

The lubricated sky remembers when

              Its clouds were H2O, not high grade oils;

              And everywhere the graded turf recalls

       When it grew grasses rather than these goddam

       Vines of white concrete and black macadam.

 

If that poor sparrow ever manages

              To climb above our gamma-powered smogs,

Let him look down upon these acreages

              And see if apple trees are bearing cogs,

              Of if some tractor isn't laying eggs,

       Its mate a diesel truck that proudly roars

       To herald a new age of dinosaurs.

 

We've done a grand job building road and rail.

              There's nowhere some good engine cannot roll

(With some good man behind the driver's wheel),

              And I would not be worrying at all

       Except, this afternoon, out in the hall,

       I overheard my vacuum cleaner say,

       "They built Der Furor just the other day."

 

From The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court 1953-2004, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004, 460 pp., ISBN 1-932842-00-4, jacketed cloth;ISBN 1-932842-01-2, trade paperback. Also available from Amazon.com in a Kindle edition.