The New Road

They came and said
Begone your rose-decked garden!
We must rid our concupiscence of this offensive beauty.
How dare you think to call your home
Beneath these vasty trees, blobbed with bats and cranes
Having cool lemonade at the river’s brink.
We must make this gruesome road
and get our prime share of real-estate.
What else is favour for?
Who said those allotments and mud- brick kilns
those gardeners, growers of orchards, farmers and herdsmen
The fisher folk, the homeless camping under trees
Let alone you, of unseemly privilege
With your nice lawn, banana grove and pots of hibiscus
Can stay here when we need to put rows and rows of plastic chairs
Up on the embankment:
Plant neon lights and hoardings in place of the ancient trees

And replace the earthen banks with gravel and concrete posts;
the chug of water pump and the donkey’s croak with tin cans and kiosks
people peeing in the dirt and flinging rubbish all about.

We must hack down all these massive trees
And bulldoze the rest
For who cares about views
When there are pretty contracts afoot!

There was one great mahogany (?ficus) tree
That so happened to stand exactly mid-way
Of the dual carriage-way To Be.
At least, lets spare this one?
It could survive in the middle
Alongside all the future full-size imported palms and lamp-posts
And salvage a speck of shade in the brazen sky.
For a joke.
What’s this tree still doing here, upright and alive?
No need to wait or ask, for what are chain-saws for!

 Man, trustee of Mother Earth
Guardian of her resources
Caretaker of her creatures
Entrusted with her sustenance and repair:
So the Holy Books proclaim
And science and sense declares.

So it is just a matter of time
before the last rose will wither:
Bags will be packed and the wreakers will come in;
Hey ho! Just another routine demolition
To complete the devastation and fulfill those prophesies of doom.