Hello Philip,
                    I´m way behind commenting on this one, but lbetter late than....It´s good. It´s a bit of a rant and it´s angry and it´s obviously supposed to be and one can very easily understand why it should be so. I think it works on those terms. I like the speaking voice, too. Do you know Ben Elton´s comment from `Stark´ ( I think)? Something about ` having the social conscience of a cat caught short on a croquet lawn´. Nicely put, I thought.



Best wishes,    Mike



--- Alkuperäinen viesti ---
(spot the update time, folks.........)


             Crude Behaviour


Crude oil is just that, isn’t it? Crude.
A mix of so many chemicals we can’t take it in
nor scrub it from a simple sea-bird’s wing.
We wouldn’t sanction it for vandal paint
and yet we cart it through the sea

and when it coats the coast of Brittany
and The Vendee,
and they listen in vain for a gannet song
from Belle Isle-en-mer to les Sables d’Olonne
and when it Clots The Galapagos,
and there’s neither Stormy petrel
nor Lava gull from Ecuador to San Cristobal,
and now it happens once again
and the limpid  sea is a foul gel
from Cocon, in Spain, to Corcubion
we say “Weren’t me, guv, honest”
and wash our hands and think,
“Just as long as I’ve oil under the bonnet”.

We see no harm in ‘environmental harm’.
We’d drain ourselves off to our own grave
and die, if there were a couple of quid in it for us.
Yes, crude we become. Like sump-oil. Calm
as waters that should be troubled.



(Aural Images  published the original 'Crude Behaviour' in the anthology 
'One World: People and Planet in Harmony'.)










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