Inexpensive Progress

Encase your legs in nylons,

Bestride your hills with pylonsO age without a soul;

Away with gentle

And all the elmy

That through your valleys roll.

Let's say goodbye to

And roads with grassy

And winding country lanes;

Let all things travel

Where motor car is

Till only Speed remains.

Destroy the ancient

But strew the roads with tin signs'Keep Left,' 'M4,' 'Keep Out!'Command, instruction, warning,

Repetitive

The rockeried roundabout;

For every raw

Must have its small 'amenity,'Its patch of shaven green,

And hoardings look a

In banks of

With floodlights in between.

Leave no old village

Which could provide a

For aeroplanes to roar,

But spare such cheap

As huts with shattered

Unlived-in since the war.

Let no provincial High

Which might be your or my

Look as it used to do,

But let the chain stores place

Their miles of black glass

And traffic thunder through.

And if there is some scenery,

Some unpretentious greenery,

Surviving anywhere,

It does not need

For soon we'll be erectingA Power Station there.

When all our roads are

By concrete monsters

Like gallows overhead,

Bathed in the yellow

Each monster belches from it,

We'll know that we are dead.