we realised how lucky we’d been! Not until the water receded from the roads could we see the vast quantities of clay, like potters’ slip, which filled the drains and ditches and covered the lanes. The few hedges to have survived intensive ploughing (right up to the edges of fields) had been washed away, shallow-rooted trees torn up, and posts for power- and phone-lines had collapsed with the earth on which they stood. Gardouch, a neighbouring village, had seen the Canal du Midi merge with the little river Gardijol and inundate all the low-lying fields and houses; wet clay was everywhere.
And then came the sun again. Clay, scraped off the roads’ surface, hardens in the ditches and verges. The lanes are baked ridges of terracotta. Broken banks of earth wait for the next downfall. Tree roots are still exposed. Sunflower stalks are stripped of their leaves, and stick out at an angle to the ground, a few sparse flowers like jaunty hats on skeletons.
And will we still refuse to see this kind of storm as a preview of payback time? Farming used to be called husbandry, in our old quaint sexist way, but land is now used for maximised profit rather than as part of our heritage to be tended and cherished. A recent headline in the Guardian stated “Earth’s resources consumed in ever greater destructive volumes”, and (even) The Sun had a banner headline on 26th July proclaiming “the world’s on fire”, reporting evidence from climate-change scientists. Is this sanctioned by Rupert Murdoch, a climate-change denier (like his self-effacing pal Donald Trump … and, apparently, a majority of the Republican party)? If it represents a change of views (I’d been going to write “heart”, but that would be problematic for both Murdoch and Trump) it’s probably too little, and much too late.
END OF DAYS
Everybody says, it’s just so hot,
or wet, or mild, or cold –
whatever – just so unseasonal.
Nature is out of joint. Unreasonable
to expect normality
at the end of days.
We’ve destroyed the earth,
belched poison in the air,
voided our waste into the seas,
and even cyber-space is filled
with bile, as if our appetite
(long sated) demands
self-harm
in every possible way.
Suicide by proxy
The world is dying.
We drink to our destruction,
speed towards oblivion,
spend more than what we’ve earned,
build what we can’t afford …
and at the end of yet another year
send each other cards
filled with nostalgia
for a past we can’t remember
(or never had)
and wishes for a future
we will never see.
We play on, blindly;
Trumped by greed.
