Poetry

Apocalypse 21

“First he came for them with time to spare

I mean the white war horse, I mean he came

And took the ones with time to stand and stare.

And then the red for them that have the aim

Of pleasure; I did nowt; I did not care.

And then the black horse took away all them

Whose will knew no restraint. And then the pale

Which brings death with him came for me as well

“And there was no one left to help me out.”

We were ten million years into the past

Having walked many miles and up ahead

The pale and deathly apocalyptic beast

Which John the Theologian wrote about

Was putting every body to the test

All those whose intellectual faculty

Had been a surrogate divinity.

And there they were, the educated ones.

My lord said: “They have reached so far by skill,

But so few clever people had the sense

To see and think about things good and well,

And know life’s principles and its essence.”

There was a great pit like the pit of hell

The Florentine described where Satan was

Levels and circles down into the ice.

“Will we go in there, too?” I asked my guide.

“If I’m correct, those who refused to know

The laws and knowledge have to go inside.

They’re digging, and they’re heading down below.

Must I go, too?” My master shook his head

And hurried me on, taking my elbow.

I saw them naked, hot and desperate

Down there digging among the quartz and slate.

Their feeble bodies, thin or corpulent

Belonged to men who never had to graft

But shuffled paper for the government

Reminding me of law and of that craft:

“Sometimes I can’t control my resentment

I want to find the socket where the Left

Draws all its power and force and pull the plug

And leave the entire country in the dark.

“It was a matrix, a Skynet, a drip.”

The open mine was wide, all the layers

Of buried compressed animals came up

As coal and oil, or limestone that with years

Had formed in the earth and soil. With every step

My lord and I were rich like millionaires

For all the carbon minerals at our feet

And there were few free men walking about.

And yet, a man appeared, a silhouette

As ragged as a scarecrow for the birds,

Or like philosophers that Russell met

In Soviet Russia unemployed and cursed.

He waited at the edge of that great pit

Then walked fast as if wanting to be first.

“What happened to my country and my heir,

After my death below ground in Merthyr?”

And I: “Are you that William Griffiths, then,

Crushed by the lift collapse at Tonyrefail?”

Then he: “The same. And I will ask again,

Why did I die, down at the bottom level

Providing for my wife and my children,

To see it consumed by a recent evil?

Those days, of ancient pure simplicity,

Has horrible decline brushed them away?

“Our bible, and our work, and family;

A man’s hands and his chapel and his house;

These were and are the inheritance today.

I left them you, but where are those virtues,

And where the goods I bought you with my pay?

I know it, do not answer. Foreign ways

And foreign people and foreign adventure

Enslaving and enslaved our simple nature.

“Until, so mad, so comforting to madness,

My lovely country blew itself to bits.”

He glanced toward the diggers and their business

Below, swarming about like winged bats,

And he: “But do not think I blame my sadness

On immigrants or other helpful guests,

I mean in luxuries and in ambition

Our race was ruined. Consider Gladstone

“Prime Minister when I was underground

Close to a billion pound of wealth he had

From plantations and slaves on either hand

Both in our country and in Trinidad.

Such Liberals will never understand.”

“Sir, if we have another chance,” I said,

“We’ll be aware. In my time, at the end

It was as if the state had made us blind,

“And principles, like good, and God, and love,

Had been secreted from us from our birth.”

“There is a second chance. Now I must leave.”

He went ahead. Reader, think of the earth

And how it takes three-six-five days to move

About the sun, and add another fourth

Of day to make the year’s duration right;

And think on how it doesn’t spin upright,

But how it tilts at one twelfth when it spins.

We used to say the earth is not the centre

But that the sun is, and amongst all suns

Ours is not special by a special nature.

They say that’s proof the core of existence

Is not the sun, or earth. Still, in the future

And in the present day, each person is

The centre of this giant universe.

And I, the least of men, can demonstrate.

Because, when my ancestor left me there,

I asked my master: “How can it be right,

That Griffiths, dead at thirty, labourer,

Can know more than I do and execrate

The greatest Liberal Prime Minister?”

My master then: “At church and by virtue

They used to know, and now I will teach you.”

He said: “Sit down a while, and close your eyes.

Becalm your senses, so that just your mind

Is working with your lungs and your airways.

Now speak my name, my name, let my name sound.

Think on it.” And I followed his advice.

Yet other thoughts were moving like the wind

Blowing with sentences and images

A tempest louder than my voice or his.

“Observe,” he said, “The way your intellect

Is not your own, but from another place;

Some part of those noises is the effect

Of being fallen. But the biggest noise

Is Satan and his devils. And in fact

The devil makes his home in time and space

Inside the human brain and human breast.

Because it is where I myself exist.”

I saw a ghost, I saw my thoughts as well.

And a demonic shape. “You see your thought?

That mind which sees its mind is eternal.

It is the intellect given by God.”

Then, I was scared, stood up, since, in my skull,

Or in my heart I’d seen that parasite,

It was a thing thinking what I should think,

Satanically lowering my rank.

Instinctively I brushed my head and arms

Looking for tubes and pipes around my skin

Like those they put in patients with problems

At hospital. “And now, the reckoning.”

He said: “I am giving death to all those harms.

I put an end to devils and Satan.”

At that the earth trembled and I could hear

Voices cry out, men’s voices, of despair.