Poetry

Apocalypse 13

If you have found these pages bound in card

And in the form I wanted, as a book,

Then you have lived. So I urge you, work hard

To meditate for God who undertook

To be a man himself. And be prepared

To save your body, too. Make no mistake

I saw the world get wrapped up like a scroll

So take care for your body and your soul.

Your body is a home to parasites

While most are useful some are not benign.

When sickness is contagious between wights

And causes flesh to sicken and decline,

Then first avoid the sick man: insect bites,

Or inhalation, or the touch of skin,

Or dirty air and hands transmit a virus

Then it will spread, be well aware of this.

Know too the land you live on is a sphere

Which passes endlessly through open space.

Its passage round the sun takes one full year,

And spins three-six-five times on its axis.

The land you see is just the top layer

A crust of rock and waste floating on fires

For there is molten red hot fiery rock

Beneath the solid land on which you walk.

The land is mostly covered by the sea.

A centripetal force makes it cohere

And sit on land. They called this gravity.

The moon pulls at the sea with like desire.

But cannot pull it up into the sky.

So many factors shape the world down here.

Not much of space on the Earth can nurture you.

The Greeks thought giants shaped the land you know.

Great titans of the sky and sea and clay

Who went to war and chained each other up

And pushed the sun around their lovely sky.

But I have seen titanic icebergs rip

And flatten peak and mountain to valley.

And when the ice receded with my step

My master and I saw the dry land crack

And burp as fire burst from it fighting back.

For land is thin and floats on fire, I say,

And slips apart revealing what’s below.

And rock like what you see on Anglesey

Comes up. Or sometimes wrinkles seem to grow

And make the land swell. Be that as it may,

I speak of actions which take ages now.

So England and America do drift

A ridge under the sea has formed a cleft.

Sure footed as a shepherd of the hills,

Who knows how steep precipitous inclines

Are walked by goats and sheep in northern Wales

And knows the easy ways through steep ravines,

My master led past great waterfalls,

Leaving our fault, forgiving me my sins.

I grew afraid when to a high cliff edge

We brought our feet on that last pilgrimag

e.
8

I do not know what part of Earth it was

But here we found a vast split in the ground

And sometimes people came each side of us

And looked into the abyss which lay beyond

All roiling molten fire, no way across.

Some of the pilgrims looked in that profound,

And threw themselves in, as if idly swept

Like breadcrumbs by a great hand from a plate.

I saw a handful do this from the cliff

And noticing a pattern asked my teacher:

‘You told me just now, that perverted love

Is what is tested here and this fissure

I must assume is putting that to proof?’

And he: ‘In Nineteen-Fifty, Geoffrey Fisher,

Archbishop, said real men prefer to die,

In nuclear war than serve the enemy.

‘In those days Satan was the Soviets.

And they were truthfully the foe of God.

He said, and I concur with Fisher’s words:

A total world collapse is not so bad

As fear and trembling before atheists;

And what would such a death be, when the dead

Are certain of an everlasting life

And Christians all, they’d get it soon enough.

‘But these ones here aren’t Christian men or men.

They are not men who served in any order

And yet provoked the Russians in Ukraine

And made a bulwark on the Russian border.

They knew when doing this they crossed a line.

Yet, since their high ideal justified murder,

The high ideal, not thought out in the least,

Committed them to make war in the East.

‘And what they loved was this: their own idea.

They knew that it might make a battlefield

Where Ukraine used to be but had no fear.

Who could reject those beliefs that they held?

Those who refused to accept their empire,

Must be quite evil and would learn to yield.

And when at last, the war began for real,

These people doubled down despite appeal.

‘And then the atom bombs began to fall.

Tell me, disciple, was it worth this end?

But those who wanted war for their ideal,

You see them in their afterlife defend

Their right to die and by choice go to hell.’

‘But what ideal?’ I said, ‘I see them land

And burn like chips in fat down there a bit,

Then go black, and in flames evaporate.

‘What possible idea did they believe,

Which made it preferable to fry in oil,

Than make negotiations?’ And: ‘In brief,’

He said: ‘They were all international

And each denied their Lord, but saw their chief

In global order. As for their ideal,

To do their own thing and do what they list,

Liberal people who wanted conquest.’

Some of my peers there were, dozens I saw,

All clever social men like the SS

And David Cameron, prime minister

Who made it legal for a man in dress

Of woman to be married under law

To other men, which led to more excess.

Wide spread collapse of all reality

At least in mind. Now, here, they were set free.

And jumping from the cliff edge finally

Had no restrictions, and complete freedom.

Yet there were others who went walking by

The path my master and I had come from,

To carry on and find another way.

And we walked on as well along with them.

‘You cannot argue with the atheist.

Leave him alone and shake away his dust.’