The Tour

Look what civilization has done. Civilization
Is concrete and steel and the bombs
That bring them down.

I feel I'm in the wrong place. That's  where
I used to have my bath. Over there .That stump
Was once a tree whose roots gorged
On black soap and a week's worth of grime.
But they lived. They were Immune.

No point searching for the holes
Where we played marble-golf and dreamed
Of how one day the tabloids would splash
Pictures of the humble fields where
Those champions honed their skills.
The holes are lost forever, lost
In this breath of bombs, awful
Like a newly woken mouth .

Look what civilization has done. Just look.
Don't worry about my tears. Men too cry.
My libation to the ghosts of my birthplace.
One moment it's a simple home to simple folks
Where the wind and walls help in spreading secrets.
Next moment the bulldozers are strutting around
Piling homes and paling all into insignificance.
“Low cost housing is good for you”

All we saw was a blanket of drab concrete smothering
Our precious green infants, and stretching blocks
Like the divisions of an ugly species of caterpillar.
So every evening instead of a hundred rhythms
Of pounding pestles banding in amateur jazz
All we now hear are concrete-propelled echoes
Ugly to the ear, hollering curses to civilization.

Then the war comes. A bombed out village
Is far better than a bombed out ‘suburb' A bombed out village buries you beneath
A pile of hard mud and palm fronds, you
Smile and crawl out, looking for a new site
To rebuild. A bombed out suburb is a real grave
Where you rest in a concrete coffin, held together
By steel nails, lined with blankets of glass.
You smile and give up the ghost.