When they have gone
there will be a hole where the Earth yawns
its tired-of-lies yawn
and land with little water
will have less.
There will be files kept
with agreements signed
to launch the enterprise but none of the off-the-record
conversations and strategic musings
heard only by the privileged
before their plans were expedited on a night
so dark it was impossible
to read fine print.
When they have gone
old men will show young men
where land once belonged to itself.
There will be memories
with no-one to remember them,
empty houses with the faucets gasping,
profits flowing away and loss
the loss of familiar
terrain with history in its every tree and rock face
and there will be international cooperation
in money changing.
When they
have gone they won’t return
to see what they had done.
Dry will be drier. They won’t be here,
they will
be mining words from someone else’s language,
from deeper than groundwater
and they shall call
darkness light.
.
David Chorlton
.