by Jerome Betts

“Factory farming is turning this beautiful British river into an open sewer”
—Opinion piece in The Guardian

Can this be Wordsworth’s “sylvan Wye,”
The one that wandered through the woods?
With chicken-prisons too close by
Gone, gone, that line of poetry goods.

R. Gibbings, one of smaller fry
Who loved canoe trips’ starts and stoppings,
How sad your Coming Down The Wye
Would now describe a stream of droppings.