AN ODE TO LITTER

Our Merry England is a vacant lot.
In Covent Garden chewing gum is thrown
by cultured thugs; in every beauty spot
we leave our trash - as durable as stone.

Prodigal of our waste, generous to the skies,
we hurl with gay abandon or straight love
a paper offering that with the seagulls flies
the four winds of the apocalypse. Above,

balloons the ballet of the soaring bags;
below, the hedgerows whisper with the voice
of winter, trailing plastic orchids, flags
to show the world that we have made our choice

to use this land as one great rubbish tip.
All year's a blooming season here; the fields
are sown with styrofoam; pollutants grip
the grass's hair while paper blossom yields

its petals. We are munificent in trash!
Rejoice with rusting cans and rotting rugs!
There's comfort in our squalor and the rash
of waste that creeps across our land, yes, hugs

the very forest trees. Salute the slough
of our great serpent science and its knot
of grandiose by-products with the stuff
of dreams. . . The English are a vacant lot.