Poetry

Apocalypse 1

After his death a human individual

Stands up again and starts another life

That’s what we hope in years of inner exile

Yet in my age this was not the belief.

We all are proud, to both deny the trial

And make it happen sooner; to be brief:

I saw what John’s Apocalypse described

And many ways of dying and being dead.

In exile in my own time and country

With drill and spirit level and my thoughts

I did not play a part in World War III

Being not important nor of many parts

(Although I still required humility)

Nor learned to pray or do such secret arts;

I had been looking for these to the end

Seeking to revive faith in the wasteland.

The first bomb fell some miles away in Crewe

And made the ground swell like a ringing bell

In Gresford where I was so that I knew

My hour had come and the hour of Whitehall

Where there had been a putsch some years ago

When intellect and virtue shuffled off

Despite my fears and wishes. But enough.

Perhaps already I had been a corpse

Uncharitably living among ghosts

I thought this as the dust cloud rose perhaps

And winds rose poisonous and roiled in gusts.

The next life is the end of all our hopes

The next explosions were several air bursts

Which came on Liverpool and Merseyside

It may have been at this point that I died.

Some metals in the earth can radiate

They’re vast and complex and they fall apart

Atomically if you agitate

Or fire some atoms at them, so they start

To mutually spark and split and split

And nuclear bonding that made them inert

Departs in an explosion hot and fast

And these were that great force within that blast.

A storm of electricity emerges

And heats the copper wires in someone’s home.

Computers die, a storm of fire surges.

The air and sky is heated into flame

People are cooked and conflagration rages.

The land is charred and hot until the time

When night sets in and dust covers the sun

And if you live you don’t see it again.

That’s what I had been told, but I recall

Nothing of this, unconscious on my back.

I stood up, damaged no doubt cell to cell

And looked toward my van, my tools, and work.

I had been working by the town’s chapel

For an old man, dead, after this attack.

The lime trees leading to the church doors burned

I’ll tell you why, as far as I’m concerned.

The supercilious of a new nation

Conceived of no legitimate constraint

On their ambition to make the Earth one.

Another nation’s elite, resistant

Preferred to die, rather than be undone.

The other details are of no account.

I’ve been a soldier with the former group

But feel accursed and betrayed since the coup.

And while the trees burned and the bodies stank,

I felt resentment for how things had been

Unable to be any man of rank

And being feared because I am a man.

Just as a youth when dying starts to think

To beg for his mum, I being old, my son

And daughter recollected; then to pray

To Christ and God his father, in this way:

“Mother of God, pray for us sinners now

Plead with your Son to help my little ones,

I can’t protect them, but I’ve faith that you

Can ask your Son, and he will make no bones.

Look after them, Virgin, because I know

That you can do it; nobody denies

That I have made mistakes and my mistake

Has made me helpless.” That is how I spoke.

That day the ways to home would be replete

With wreckage, bodies, fires and general chaos

So I determined I had best complete

My labour while I mulled over my loss.

I thought about my country and its fight

Considerations now mere idleness.

Later, another missile hit the ground

A bright light like a rainbow spread around.

While I was watching, thinking of my wife

I started walking, thinking I should go,

And take her and the children somewhere safe.

While ash began to fall like dirty snow

A man came walking through the burning chafe

Which fell around us in the afterglow.

This living man was wearing work man’s clothes

I saw him breathing as he took deep breaths.

His knees were bandaged like they used to use

When mining, and his hands were big and wide

A hard man who engulfed me in his gaze

From out the darkness, this is what he said:

“The fighting is all over now, these days

Are finished. Everyone one you knew is dead

And all of them you didn’t understand

Or know, are lying underground.

“Your wife has asked me, and so it will be

That you can join her and the ones you lost

Although from this world sequestered away.

Now follow me.” He speaks with language tossed

Across a great distance, it seemed to me.

The nuclear storm clouds rose against the mist

While he stood close in front of them and stepped

Amidst the burning ashes and I wept.

“It would have been right for your regiment

To fight although it brought us to this pass

For doing hard things with a good intent

Is how it was ordained to be for us.

But think no more what history meant

And loyalties to country or to class.

We’ll make our way now on the pilgrimage

Which you will make, and all from every age.”