Actual Poem

You should be here, Nature has need of you.

She has been laid waste. Smothered by the smog,

the flowers are mute, and the birds are few

in a sky slowing like a dying clock.

All hopes of Proteus rising from the sea

have sunk; he is entombed in the waste

we dump. Triton's notes struggle to be free,

his famous horns are choked, his eyes are dazed,

and Neptune lies helpless as a beached whale,

while insatiate man moves in for the kill.

Poetry and piety have begun to fail,

as Nature's mighty heart is lying still.

O see the wound widening in the sky,

God is labouring to utter his last cry.

Explanatory Notes

5 Proteus → (Greek mythology) a shape-changing sea-god

7 Triton → (Greek mythology) a sea-god that used shells as wind instruments

9 Neptune → the Roman god of the sea

10 insatiate → never satisfied