A poem from Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Kolgn, land of monks and bones,

and pavements fang’d with murderous stones,

and rags, and hags, and hideous wenches,

I counted two and seventy stenches,

each one distinct, and several stinks!

Ye nymphs that watch over sewer and sink,

the river Rhine does, I think,

wash clean the city of Cologne;

but thereafter, what power divine,

shall wash clean, the river Rhine?

Old ST was a drug addict, a utopian, and a nimrod, but he reminds us that in cleaning up messes, we often soil our own hands.

Maybe we ought to think about cleaning up this mess before the dirt is too severe to wash off us, once we’ve washed it from the planet.