Race Against Waste

The last blood-red rays of the sun come a-weeping,
O’er the landscape so blackened and charred,
And with the cold night, giant rats come a-creeping,
Like the ranks of Praetorian Guard.
And the windows are shuttered and the doors are locked tight,
As the children are shielded from the terrors of night,
But the rustling is heard when they turn off the light,
O’er a country that’s blighted and scarred.

The oul’ wans tell stories of an Irish Nirvana,
With sensations of every hue,
And the rain fell so softly like heavenly manna
On the flowers and the trees as they grew,
When the smell of the cut grass in summer came floating,
And the cotton wool clouds on the blue sea came boating,
And the warm, yellow sun perched contentedly, gloating
O’er a world brightly painted and new.

But the streets are all choked with deposits of plastic,
There are forty grey shades of decay.
And the people declare it will take something drastic
To clear all the rubbish away.
The rivers run black when the dull skies start raining,
The people are haggard and tired of complaining,
Disease and destruction forever constraining
The rights of the children to play.

By night come the scavengers, slipping and crawling,
O’er the mounds of black plastic-bound waste.
A great sea of brown fur, now sliding, now falling
Off slippery bags in their haste.
The children can take off their facemasks at last,
And dream of the tales from an uncluttered past,
Where the stage was bedecked for a colourful cast,
And a bright rainbow future was faced.