We've had a lot of rain lately (Global Warming)

And prices just keep going up (Brexit)

Our Jimmy, he's just got his A Levels (Natural Selection)

...and I wade through the new amalgam

World of Rare Books sits now online with World of Books

Extremely banked with ample publications

Multiplications, deluges – but one unlamplit puddle

The reason being drops (the books) are much diluted

Or comminuted

Alas contemporary: leant sideways in toppled slants

Like candles, stair-rods, cats and dogs – list as you like it-

A very samey dash of pitter-patter scattered down

Whose themes come off and on, desultory upon

Empiric heads no-spokey broken down umbrellas -

Surrender impecuniously

Strain out their sense, no recompense – ah, what the day? -

Possessing this man, this lady's obsession

The genders in-between like Simon says will limpet

On amazon or Queen

Nor many thoughts to link.

Once was a fountain Arethusa, flowers bloomed by brooks

Idyllic browned, long-time-contused, musty old books

Containing matters measureless to man

Enchanting sarabands, poured cornucopiae, fine threaded excellencies

Books -educated, elemental parvenus

Now shot out from the canon, their common consciousness deceased;

All beauty, value, oceans overflowing, leaves

Here pools the puddle, where's thirst to ask refreshment

Here books, our mirrors, aide memoir our daft remiss

Read us out flouted perorations; home-planet's desserts;

The raw lacunae of our selfsame souls

I use a trope or analogue no more: the effluence of brains

Bad tutors gone abroad to shore our misdemeanours

Their accents spell mis-sold words unsustainable

Were a proper reason thought-through for their gone on sale

Their foe – illumination - friends - our flattered tales

Masked escapades to stay a status quo procuring trouble;

Its bubble its pall bearer

The fatal fruits de mal that fabricate our traits

Bring expectations; prated rights; a bandied aspiration

Extolling more and better, on whore's terms withal,

Way-crippled enterprise whose flail would be adoing

Esteeming every trivia as success, advancement

Its thrusts all fuss, serves curves of milk and honey

Cries: 'handsome, useful, individual':

This way of life is fall'n into the sere and yellow leaf,

Unmended courses, buildings, chattels; we who knock down things

And waste our best most blessed famous heritage:

Discourse will sell us fables, table false pretences

A whistling 'fit for purpose' fike and porpoise beached

Weak, ailing, lost its native element

I would not believe a world, a people, lost so badly

Had given up so glibly globally far better interest;

Inheritance - albeit some way incident dead wood -

But to have dumped it all, and feted that, as we have done...

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

A bedlam uncongenial to the cogencies of order

The cosmos-working laws, and Holy Writ's, the world's day motions

Go round a gorgeous sun, the seasons, cycles, ages, tides

We interspersed so far removed from feelings, repercussions,

To come on us perforce; we course our own good ways

Cast by distractions, choosing hold fast to destruction

Forego a natural order, balance, play of give and take

Our people Bedlam inmates, hands held out to gain

Our lights removed, blind minds and sensitivities

Defray the basal-valid wonder works and lungs

The earth provides and needs

The mismatch here declares so loud an incongruity

Our way back lacks its furniture for equilibrium

Sheer lack of prayers impedes a milder revolution

One natural? – God forbid! -where Jonah's change of heart

Who preached and turn-around, swung Nineveh

And God relented?

Good books cure likewise bring the soul alive to earth,

A landing, and the human spirit's ground

Here's God's disposed reality, that sets our eyes, our wages

Ignore that pouree poured out, published late in torrent gush

A gear, a clutch too much produced pulp product

Post-haste devolves to landfill, our excesses offloading

Were made in vain from bandit raids on a tired, afflicted earth

Extracted, then shinned back to her – as testate poisons