Winter Drive

JAMES McAULEY

WINTER DRIVE

Fallow fields, dark pewter sky,

Steely light on the wet plain,

Evening falls in freezing rain

With a promise and a lie.

Promise in the leaden sky,

In the sodden fields bleak shine,

In the slate vats full of wine,

In the knowledge that we die.

But the lie is in the soul,

And it rots the world we have

Till there's nothing left to save.

Dying world and deadened sky;

Traffic streams beyond control.

What is left to make us try?