Roy Ashwell
Global Warming in the Mixed Male Medical Ward
Today we hear the sea is rising
And will do so for ten thousand years!
Is that not good? We must await the days when
Warmly, implacably, a tide will flow cheerfully
Through the swing doors tinkling with silver instruments
And floating glass and the white caps of the nuns!
In it will come from the western end, broadly
Smoothly lifting us on our rubber mattresses
Till our noses rub the ceilings then
Pour us out of the windows, if we don’t capsize,
Plastered, and plunge and float up, fairway buoys.
And there it will be, the old world made new,
With reefs of oak tree tops and islands,
Smaller and smaller, hill brows, church towers,
Stations disappearing like plunging whales,
And over the glittering horizons coming for us,
Animals in arks, bidden to pluck us out!
And Europe gone and the East, and
All the wounded and the dying and the maimed
And the weary with well-doing and
All poor faint souls past mortal care,
Rubbing sides with lions, embracing giraffe legs,
Sailing Southward, sailing Westward,
Into a blue beyond bound. That
I could wait for!
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