On Ageing

The years have fluttered off like moths The moonlight casts a sickly glow My sheets are cold as winding cloths I'm like a scarecrow grey and wan Watched many seasons come and go I wake surprised to see the dawn And all around is so changed Now I walk tentative and slow The climate curdles, grows deranged People are now attached to phones It is the winter of the crow Skies fill with predatory drones Forests are felled, mile after mile Once they were home to bird and doe Mankind is driven to defile The very air, once rarefied Is rank, where noxious gases grow Ice caps and habitats destroyed Seas, choked with plastic turn malign Destroying cyclones wheel and blow While governments ignore each sign? Soon earth itself may be a ghost Into oblivion, gone tiptoe All native beauty squandered, lost Across the world wars suppurate Whole populations, aimless, go The victims of the Gods of hate I have grandchildren. Will their fate Be compromised, a cruel cost? Will intervention come too late? Soon, I'll be dust, part of the dew Of this small planet, tempest tossed Oh Earth, what have we done to you?