I BOAT-tripped a large offshore wind farm today
Three hundred mute livestock spread out on display
A uniform species, one colour, one size
Bird-menacing creatures near-spanning the skies
Impassively eying the far distant shore
Their uncanny silence eliciting awe
Observed from the briny, they moodily loom
Grim harbingers of a dystopian doom.
Mankind’s sheer inventiveness plainly on view
But his daft, irresponsible tampering too
Blue waters now ploughed fields, the proud Channel scarred
Our ancient marine vistas visually marred
The three-bladed turbines in serried rows neat
Our gushing guide hails an ‘engineering feat –
‘They’re harnessing wind power while we’re asleep
‘Renewable energy from out in the deep’.
But enemy territory this is for me
A sceptic ’midst pilgrims on a Sloop John(son) B
So temerity bids me ask: ‘What is the bill
‘For wrecking this God-given coastal idyll?
‘For taxpayers, voters and working-class folk
‘Who venture to question these follies of woke?’
Hard numbers come none but hostility plenty
A self-righteous anger and rhetoric empty.
‘Whatever the cost we should pay it’, they hector
‘To save Mother Earth from an end-of-life spectre
‘So fossil fuels, nuclear and fracking must flee
‘And wind-farms proliferate on land and sea.’
Sure, net-zero brings out the worst in these martyrs
Economic indifference, vainglory for starters
But argumentation is bootless and painful
All logic is missing, their gazes disdainful.
Not staring in wonder? How dare I object
To the manifest truths of Sweet Caroline’s sect?
Now prisoner-on-board, they see me as the crank
Sans swift recantation, I’m walking the plank
So in self-preservation I button my lip
Till terra-firma safety feign having a kip
But there’s no great surprise, for there will be such scenes
When the blue lot elected turn out to be Greens.
