Mantz Yorke
Road Movie
The dilapidated bus has transported us
far beyond green fields
and communities devastated by flood,
whose houses are no more
than occasional walls
standing above rubble and mud.
We’ve traversed vast plains
scorched to a leonine tan
and deserts dotted with creosote bushes,
leaving behind an oily smoke
from an engine long past its best.
Measures of atmospheric CO2 tell us
the bus has been accelerating:
from 31 parts per hundred thousand
a century ago,
successive silver anniversaries
have recorded 33, 37 and 43.
And all this while,
the driver, sealed off in his cab
and staring straight ahead
as if hypnotised by the donkeys
nodding on his dashboard,
has been oblivious to our shouts
to slow down
and stop.
The bus is now travelling through
a cindery landscape,
with nowhere to turn round
and go back.
We are heading towards the end
of the road: on the horizon
is a red glow below dark cumulus.
Not the setting sun,
but fire.