Inside the Robert Burns Pub

 Photographs of the Robert Burns Pub located beside the Village Shopping Plaza.

The Village Shopping Plaza today

The old Village Shopping Plaza has been vandalized, windows broken, things falling apart, garbage strewn everywhere, junk from inside the building littering the area; the old Robert Burns Pub has also been vandalized. Nature is taking over; first it destroys, then it occupies, then it's returned to the source.

The Anthropocene is cancer

Planet Earth, 1972

The Anthropocene

is cancer on the planet: 

people are everywhere,

from suburbia to homeless, and in a crowded

Indian street someone yelling

"1.2 Billion!!", full of fervour

celebrating India's population

surpassing that of China;

while in Beijing tofu houses,

disintegrating apartment blocks,

begin to crumble as concrete mixed

with sand crumbles in your hand,

someone's always cutting corners

to increase profit;

it's all paper tiger here

on Planet Earth,

a papier maché society

of cities and cars and pollution; 

civilization founded on graft and grief,

and appearance always

over everything else,

there are just too many people

roaming the planet, scratching

out a living in dirt and sand,

dominion over animals, trees, insects,

birds, lakes and rivers, oceans and seas,

we're killing everything, extinction 

for the natural world,  we're killing birds

with windmill generators, while

off Long Island whales are dying

where windmills as tall 

as the Chrysler Building

stand ominous a mile off shore;

it's the Anthropocene cancer—

Stephen Spender: "The more

I am acquainted with my dog

the less I like humans."

Think of Detroit

where middle class people lived,

half the population uprooted,

moved to other cities,

suburbs, slums

or living on the side

of a road, a trailer park,

a Walmart parking lot,

from city life to homeless, city blocks

returned to weeds, sidewalks

crumbled, electricity

cut off, water mains broken

at 3 a.m., never repaired, 

the residual cancer

of too many people, it's become

hell on earth; the Anthropocene

is spreading, changing the planet

to a likeness of ourselves, people sleeping

in NYC subway cars, migrants

sprawled across two seats

legs spread open, and at the

bazaars in Thailand, hoards of

people out at night, they're all

eating roast chicken, steamed

rice, mountains of food, by morning

it's mountains of shit, piss river,

and buckets of semen, the same

in South America, just too many people

degrading the noosphere and changing

everything that once was,

the US border jammed with migrants

streaming across, here they come folks,

from all over the world, truckloads

of young men, people fleeing at night

for their lives, fleeing

across the border, people

from China and Cuba and Venezuela

and Africa; if you own anything

soon you'll own nothing, you'll

be homeless, soon you'll rent

everything, listening to second rate music

from America, even the fine arts

have been desecrated by people

with no talent, no vision,

no craft; in the future

everything you own 

you'll be able to carry

in case you have to run

like hell, across the fields,

through the darkened streets,

behind the razor wire, the barbed wire,

it's not going to get greener this way,

it used to be a lush world, green

with a blue sky overhead, a quiet river,

and then the rain came, the floods came,

the fires came, top soil blown away,

people came with their guns and greed,

the greed of people is only surpassed

by their ambition, not caring who dies,

they're maimed, arms amputated, minds

destroyed; the rich don't care about you,

they never did; the Green Belt desecrated

and monster houses constructed;

sold down the river, the big house,

the factory parking lot, the empty lot,

piss river a chemical soup,

the orange coloured sky,

earth that grows nothing,

you can dream all you want

you just can't take off this veil of tears;

believe nothing, the blight of the world

is too many people, soylent green;

the Anthropocene is cancer, 

wars and propaganda,

history a commentary on a commentary,

lies piled on lies, it's become unintelligible:

the Anthropocene

is cancer on the earth. 

 

 

Scenes from a Canadian cottage garden

 Photographs taken the evening of September 7, 2023.

Evening, and the light is coming in diagonally and preparing 
for ever diminishing brightness

Phlox are back for a second bloom

 

On the right, that's a sumac tree that self-seeded
and in three years is at least 15 feet high

The brown-eyed Susans are reaching
the end of summer, the cone flowers
are mostly finished

See those little things towards the right?
They are a cloud of little flies one sees 
in the summer

Sometimes the dying and dead flowers
can be attractive

There is that sumac again

A hollyhock, they are a lot more difficult to grow
than they should be; they were weeds in my youth,
now they are biennials and celebrated when flowering

A huge hosta, as though I have some special
ability to grow hostas... well, they grow themselves
and the best advice is to leave them alone and they'll get it right

The house is covered in vines as though old people
who don't maintain their home live here. . . someone tells
me they are bad for the brick work and I plan to cut them back

Some planning can go a long way

Black currants I planted three years ago

This did so well

My wife planted this gingko tree about fifteen
years ago beside our front lawn, it has done well

"September 1913" by W.B. Yeats

 

William Butler Yeats in 1923

What need you, being come to sense,

But fumble in a greasy till

And add the halfpence to the pence

And prayer to shivering prayer, until

You have dried the marrow from the bone;

For men were born to pray and save:

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,

It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind,

The names that stilled your childish play,

They have gone about the world like wind,

But little time had they to pray

For whom the hangman’s rope was spun,

And what, God help us, could they save?

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,

It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread

The grey wing upon every tide;

For this that all that blood was shed,

For this Edward Fitzgerald died,

And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,

All that delirium of the brave?

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,

It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again,

And call those exiles as they were

In all their loneliness and pain,

You’d cry, ‘Some woman’s yellow hair

Has maddened every mother’s son’:

They weighed so lightly what they gave.

But let them be, they’re dead and gone,

They’re with O’Leary in the grave.

"Big Yellow Taxi" by Joni Mitchell

 

Traffic on Snowdon in 1947

They paved paradise, put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin' hot spot

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise, put up a parking lot
(Ooh, bop-bop-bop-bop, ooh, bop-bop-bop-bop)

They took all the trees put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar an' a half just to see 'em

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise, put up a parking lot
(Ooh, bop-bop-bop-bop, ooh, bop-bop-bop-bop)

Hey farmer, farmer put away that DDT now
Give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and the bees
Please

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise, put up a parking lot
(Ooh, bop-bop-bop-bop, ooh, bop-bop-bop-bop)

Late last night I heard the screen door slam
And a big yellow taxi took away my old man

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise, put up a parking lot (ooh, bop-bop-bop-bop)

I said don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise, put up a parking lot (ooh, bop-bop-bop-bop)
They paved paradise, put up a parking lot (ooh, bop-bop-bop-bop)
They paved paradise
Put up a parking lot

Memo from Montreal to Toronto:

 

A green belt is for perpetuity,

not for the convenience

of politicians and their friends;

this housing Ford wants,

it's 1950s suburban development,

letting developers and politicians get rich.

Note: Premier Doug Ford of Ontario is relentless in his support for building houses on the green belt outside of Toronto. I doubt he understands that a population that, in general, supports climate change is not sympathetic to building houses and highways on the green belt. Why not build on land zoned residential? The project is already sullied with corruption.