Utopia

 

Utopia

 

Four weeks -

All it takes, to show

you can’t have both;

how pipe dreams

sink boats.

 

Power from streams

provisional winds -

but what comes of cold

remains cold,

will do so

to the last rage

of a new ice age.

 

It cannot warm

will not prevail

hanging limp, the mains’lls

shiver timbers

with whispers of waste,

and all those ships

that cannot sail

remain in place.

 

Turn you turbines turn

like stroboscopes -

offer us freeze-frames

of better times,

8.3 billion stick silhouettes

dancing minuets,

writing one hundred lines

 

of unions trashed,

closed pits,

rust that clogs the drill bits,

and coal slumbering

deep in seams –

 

remove pumps,

shut off sumps,

let winding engines

wind their last,

with final blast

lay cooling towers to rest -

 

send generals and majors forth,

let whatever will

take its bloody course,

curse your green seas

damn your clear lakes –

 

four weeks is

all it takes.