Elegy For An Honoured Guest

Our blue bowl beauty cracks under the sun;

it groans, and constricts before our eyes

scientists warn that its time has come,

yet Keith 'Riff'' Richards is still alive.

The Rosella turns brown beneath this heat

the bees diminish and lose their direction

the ants have retreated beneath the ground

and old Keith still gets no satisfaction.

Our rivers are stagnant the fish are upended

heaving and gasping one eye to the sky

in dark green pools of still putrid waters

once fresh and flowing, now somewhere to die.

The loony deniers still dance their denial

of science, in greed and gormless myth.

It's said that Keith smoked his old man's ashes

just one more swaggering rock and roll riff.

Is that what we're doing with our inaction,

smoking the ashes of a wonderful world?

Is this the gift we pass down to our children;

a danse macabre: a disaster in twirl?

Whose world transfigures through our excesses?

We've fired the leaves, fouled water and air

no gods will warn us, scorn us or save us

we reap what we sow: no less than despair.

This Earth will receive an honoured guest

When Keith 'Riff' Richards is laid out to rest.


Note: The final two lines are reworked from WH Auden's elegy for WB Yeats.
Keith Richards is a member of the Rolling Stones rock band. He was infamous for his dissolute lifestyle, apart from his music.