Making Progress Poem by Richard George

When did you last spot
one of Noah's jalopies -
the frog-pout Anglia,
the snail-shell Allegro
or an Imp pug-squashed to a concertina?

Where are the Eurovision flops,
Daf, Yugo, Simca,
or that Quasimodo Renault
ramped up on stilts,
an all fours steatopygous hoofer?

Gulag, what Gulag
crushed Moskvitch babushkas
or the thin-lipped Skoda,
a coffin on ice-skates,
brogue like a motorboat?

How were we chicaned by badge-engineering,
the Wolseley (né Austin) ,
third eye glinting in its grille,
and the Vandenplas, the office martinet's panzer?
Rust shall come to ye all, saith the Lord.

And who can forgive
a Princess built like Henry Cooper?

But tyre-tracks wallpaper
our bedrooms of memory.
We rode through cars to school, university, marriage.
That first kiss -
was it in a Morris Marina?