They built a high cathedral green, with banners bright and bold,
Where every sin was fossil-born, and virtue bought and sold.
Its priests wore robes of solar cloth and preached the wind’s pure grace,
While far below, the blackened mills fell silent in disgrace.
They cast the sceptics from the gate, as heretics unclean,
For daring ask what gears would turn to keep the vast machine.
The books were sealed with models strange, where facts were bent to will,
And while the candles dimmed at dusk, the tithe rose higher still.
In Congo's shade, the children toil to feed the battery's need,
And foreign kings grow fat and proud from every planted seed.
Yet common folk must bear the yoke, their fires taxed to dust,
While those who fly on private wings still trade in oil and trust.
So ask not whom the green bells toll, nor where the savings lie,
They toll for fields now fallow-grown beneath a carbon sky.
This creed that claims to cool the Earth burns equity instead,
While power shifts from hearth and hand to suits in marble red.
By John Shenton