David Green's "Crickets in the Dark"

Lawrence Durrell was fond of crickets and cicadas (I'm not sure if he distinguished between the two).  David's fine poem marks the change in sensibilities.  Compare his with Durrell's poetic description at the end of Justine (1957):  "The cicadas are throbbing in the great planes, and the summer Mediterranean lies before me in all its magnetic blueness."  Things have indeed changed.  —  BR

Crickets in the Dark

Ⓒ2014

As the jets scream home

To cross lit air ports

dumping excess fuel over

Huddles homes in the early dark,

As the eco cars, the muscle cars

And all kind of cars and trucks

Entrain for lurching journey home

And the air is rank

with fumes as bad or worse

Than cigarettes,

I see the sky fade slowly

Like watercolour swept

Across a wet page

And the crickets croak

Like earth fired machines;

Two tone engines pumping life

Beneath the ground

As they have always done —

Below climate change,

Beneath the hooves of giants,

Beneath the feet of man,

Beneath cement and car parks,

Beneath the sewers, the wires

The water pipes,

beyond the hum of cars and trucks;

Simpler, older than cockroaches

And we abide while we may.

— David Green