We sailed the sea

In a boat made of ivory,

And we sailed away

Till the thirty-third day.



On the thirty-third day,

We docked in a land;

Crafted by the hands

Of a million slaves.



It was sparkling out

In the night darkened sky,

As the people burned

All their candles away.



Into the sky, the smoke rose

So high to the stars,

And it warmed up the air,

And the jumper I’d worn,

Brushed the floor

As I carried it

Along through the streets.



‘No more ice,

Only water,

Only smoke,

Only steam,

No more frost to freeze

The fast running streams.

No more cold to tear

Your lungs at the seams’

This was seen as the reason

To why they were right,

Not wrong, to continue

To set more fires alight.



’It is good, it is good’ they sang.

They danced round the fire;

The warm got warmer as the fire drew higher.

'No more cold, no more cold.

It has melted away.

We’ll only have summer

For the rest of our days.

Under the orange tinted sky,

We’ll stay happily beneath it.

No more white, snow-filled clouds

That sprinkle around us

Like a shroud.

The smoke has melted the cold all away;

We’ll only have summer for the rest of our days.’

This is what the townsfolk did say.



On the forty-third day

A marching band played

For remembrance

Of the famous Chirp-Chirp birds.

It is thought that they’d flown

Far, far away.

As nobody had seen them

For quite a few days.



Because of the smog

and because of the heat,

They could no longer stay

And decided to fleet

From the suffocating air

And the ash filled, choking skies.

They left while they could,

Before all the flock died.



Now pennies are collected in effort to remind

Of the other kinds of birds that may fly away too;

If they all did that, there would be no bird stew.

So, the people pay their pennies to save the last few.



We had to sail away from this hot, smoky land,

On the forty-fifth day, we walked back to the sand,

Where our ivory boat was ******* at the dock,

And we laughed at the sight of the Chirp-chirp bird flock!



They were perched on the boat awaiting our return

To escape this land hidden safely in the stern.

Without having to fly they could relax,

And just lie back;

They wouldn’t even need to give their purple wings a flap.



We remarked how they were clever,

And we let them stay on board.

Then we planned the fate

Of the Chirp-Chirp bird hoard.



When we return, they will live in little, cramped busy zoos,

Or we may even make them into Chirp-Chirp bird stew.