Science, where are you ? Roger McGough

I started smoking young. The big C
didn’t scare me. By the time
I was old enough to get it,
Science would have found a cure.
‘Ad astra per angina’ was the family
motto, and thrombosis
an heirloom I didn’t care to inherit.
But I didn’t worry. By the time
I was old enough to face it
St Science would surely have
slain that particular dragon.

Suddenly I’m old enough…..

Science, where are you Science?
What have you been doing
All these years? Were you playing
Out when you should have been
Doing our homework? Daydreaming
In class when you should have been paying attention?
Have you been wasting your time
And worse still, wasting mine

When you left school did you
Write scripts for Tomorrow's World
Before being seduced by a starlet
From a soap ad? Lured by the
Bright lights of commercialism
Did you invent screwtop bottles,
Self- adhesive wallpaper, non-stick
Pans, chocolate that melts
In the mouth not the hands?
Kingsize fags, tea-leaves in bags
cars and bras sycophantic
Oxo cubes now transatlantic?

(or worse still
Did you fall
for a sweet talkin’
warmonger?have a
consciencectomy
and practise death control?)

The Arts I expected nothing from.
Good company when they’re sober
but totally unreliable. But
Science, I expected more from you.
A bit dull perhaps, but steady.
Plodding, but getting there in the end.
Now the end limps into view and where are you? Cultivating
cosmic pastures new? Biting off
more Space than you can chew?
Science you’re needed here, come down
and stay. I’ve got this funny pain
and it won’t go awa

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