Poetry

Apocalypse 11

By my wrist watch it had been just six days,

Since we had dropped the world-denying bombs.

The zero hour of midnight came to pass,

All hands had met at twelve as many times,

That was the time that I first saw the ice.

'All you with open mouths, see the ice comes,

All you who take and give all of your days

You do not have much time,' so the ice says.

We are merciful and organised and strong.

But not as strong and composed as an ice age.

It was a mile high wall moving along,

I saw it coming through the foliage;

But whereas old glaciers had done their thing

And crushed and torn the earth and done damage,

That was the labour of ten thousand years,

While this was coming fast with that white horse.

My guide and I began to run ahead.

As you drive west to Blaenau Ffestiniog

And see the town under the mountain side

Which is all grey and black with shattered rock

Which seems to pour from earth like poisoned blood,

Or see the slag heap like a dragon’s back

As you approach Rhostyllen, you would know

The type of ruin I saw that ice do.

Now as we fled before it, we were passed

By other men who tried to make a break.

Two of them were familiar and I guessed

One was Saddam Hussein who ruled Iraq.

His army fled and he had been deposed

Before some rivals hung him by the neck

In those days when the army I had served

The British, gave Saddam what he deserved.

“I’d like to speak to him,” I told my leader

“You there, come here, old monster of Bagdad,

The two of you,” he shouted, “That is Bin Laden,”

In an aside to me. “We will be dead!

We must go on!” the man said. “There’s a ladder.

Come here and see, and talk,” my master said.

And so, the four of us became a group.

Taking a recondite path to the top.

After, while riding that ice vehicle

Which slowly covered everything in sight

As if it were a blanket that they throw

Over a man when he has his hair cut;

And riding it and hearing down below

A grinding noise buzz down there, it was quiet,

And comforting, like that noise that comes up

When in your sleeping bag, you do the zip.

So, watching as the land fell into winter

To get chewed up, I sat there far above,

I turned to Jesus: “You are my lord and mentor,

But can you teach me and by some means prove

Why these men live and are not in the centre

Of hell, where many think that they should rove.

My king opened his mouth, but then those two

Began to speak at once: “I know you too,

“By that impassive face you were a captain

Or maybe just a corporal in the force

Which came to Basra when they made me captive

After they found me there, crawling with fleas.

That was the moment when the chaos I kept down,

That great chaotic force I’d kept at peace

Was let loose forcefully among the tribes

Shi’ite and Sunni, among the Arabs.

“I was a hard man, which is what was needed.

And your great and small Satans removed me.

And then, my death for show, humiliated.

And what came after will forever be

So terrible that words cannot record it.

And as for this man sitting next to me,

And suffering the same fate in the end

The things we did you’ll never understand.”

He dropped his head when he had finished talk.

And I said, to my lord: “Are these forgiven,

Or saved, after the Twin Towers in New York?”

And he: “To rebel states rebels are given

And God provided them to do that work.

The West, in those days, wanting to make heaven,

Considered these two and their followers

To be in need of good, but made things worse.

“Besides, know this: the pillaging you’ve seen

The desert-making power that I unleashed

And now the ice age here to supervene,

Has punished the heaven-makers, it has punished

Those with that goal, the globalising men.

For them, ‘evil’ is what they have not wished.

Now if you want to dub this Bin Laden

As ‘evil’ or as ‘good’ you must ask God

What these things are, and this they never did.

“This Saddam and Osama by contrast

Were humbled and did not pretend to God,

And in their spheres and fields did what they must.

Their enemies did wrong by that standard.

But does each have more virtue in his breast,

To see the finish point and make the grade?

I do not know,” he stood, then picked me up

Surveying the ice fields around our group.

“Then what is good?” I asked, “That is learned in prayer

The pure prayer of the devotee of silence,

Or from the Church and from a good master.

Learned best, however, in mystic alliance

Of your mind with God’s mind high in the aether

To get to which involves prayerful violence.

And about which you have a lot to learn.”

And then we rose, leaving those accursed men.

The winds rose, penetrating skin like thorns,

And ice seemed hot on skin in these extremes,

An awful mix of skin and cold makes burns,

I could not feel or see right. These are themes

That I had just discussed with God. By turns

Good things are bad where everything just seems.

Without a divine light inside your mind

The whole world is illusion, I have found.

For in nature alone there is no measure.

All things just change and go on making change.

The sacred birth of souls is mixed with pleasure

Under the bedsheets two people arrange,

Absent of mind, and coupled in desire,

To bring a soul to light. But what is strange

Is that these dark acts bring to light a life

Dark mixed with light and despair with relief.

Now, cold makes crystals; for, inside a liquid

Reducing temperature in elements,

Causes the atoms to bind and go solid.

And look close: with a magnifying lens

To see the shapes they make, star-like and florid.

We call them crystals. Crystals make their bonds

And are the reason that a thing is hard.

Heat up a solid to make it liquid.

The rate or speed at which a thing is cooled

Determines how the crystal shapes will knit.

So, if you have some iron in a mould

And need it to be hard, then temper it

Or quench it, rapidly from warm to cold;

But how to get a temperature so hot

That it will melt the metal first, I swear

To solve this problem for you later here.

But first, note that your body and your blood,

Being liquid, freeze (first at the toe and thumb).

Blood is a mixture of the white and red

If you examine it when it is warm.

The red cells mostly keep your body fed

With air and energy in tiny form.

The white are guard dogs of your flesh and clay,

And swarm around, eating the enemy.