This is the Junk Mail crossing the border
Delivered by truck now, that is the order
None of it wanted, all of it waste
All of it tinged with commercial distaste
Delivering catalogues all unsolicited
Names on the mailing list slyly elicited ‘Yearly subscription’ – that’s the refrain ‘Take out a loan or a time-share in Spain’
Unwanted brochures shrouded in plastic
Thousands of leaflets bound by elastic
All come unbidden, a waste of a trip
Bound for the landfill, bound for the tip
All come by lorries pounding the highways
Blocking the ring road and clogging the by- ways
No more will the Night Mail arrive at the station
Derailed by the forces of privatisation ‘Victorian problem – Victorian answer’?
That just insults the fine service they ran, sir
Imagine old Isambard taking this tack: ‘Sorry we’re late sir, leaves on the track’!
Now, gone is the romance
Gone is the snobbery
The twenty-first century’s Greatest Train Robbery
So while we’re all sleeping the postman is driving
And the profits of shareholders quietly thriving
To bring us material for which no-one asked
To redress the balance is how we are tasked
Here comes the postman rounding the block
Here comes the postman, here comes his knock
With quickening heart I leap from my bunk
Anything interesting, dear?’
Nothing, just junk!’

With acknowledgements to W H Auden, Ballard Bertram and the BBC