The Toxic Years

by Thomas B. White

A myopic fly buzzed
cheerfully in the backdraft
of choked, smoggy winds,
happy that it could see this
murky world only through
the deformities of its bleary
eyes: bubbles of smoky glass
bestowing a slurred, gray
purity on the Toxic Years,

the years of our lives,
the years when we all
wish we only had the
crude, comforting awareness
of nearsighted, mutant insects,
when poisoned smoke
swarmed into our bleary eyes

reminding us of
the wisdom of our
forebears who had warned
of this day of the dying sun
when the earth would crumble
into an abandoned palace of
dust, death, and despair,
a carnival house of dark mirrors,

where we all have the eyes
of flies but with the clear, accursed
sight of the twisted image of our
faces growing old in the Toxic Years.