A lady out in Louisburg
Takes a morning swim
And then with other helpers
Collects refuse for the bin
And Carrowmore is cleansed and clean
Not just by every tide
But by thoughtful people on the beach
Who live by local pride
Environment in England
Tells another tale
Polluted rivers chemicals
Soon we’ll be drinking ale
And that’s another problem
We are boozing far too much
Lose yourself in alcohol
That frightening liquid crutch
The mines and mills of Lancashire
I saw them growing up
People condemned to factories
Their lives not up to much
Treat us as so much rubbish
Rubbish you will get
The environment will go to hell
You ain’t seen nothing yet
Brian Fahy
17 January 2022
+ Reading items of news today I read the lovely story of the lady in Louisburg, Mayo, who keeps her local beach clean: the article by John Vidal in the Guardian, about the awful neglect of the environment in the UK, and an article about the increase in alcohol consumption during these months of the pandemic.
Remembering my childhood days in Tyldesley, I thought about how people were made to be servants of machines in the pursuit of profit. To see the environment trashed is very upsetting, and water pollution is frightening. We will poison ourselves. Greed is one factor in all this. Another is the way we treat one another. If we treat people as rubbish by the way we house them and employ them, they will not value themselves, and consequently will not value the world around them.
Brian Fahy.
Erris Poetry 