Poetry

Apocalypse 29

After the fire of the Lord fell, I was blind.

It was as if night came on rapidly

Throwing its blanket; day never returned.

“Your eyes are gone. Don’t take it personally,”

My master said. “And yet things are outlined

And I can see,” I offered hopefully.

In truth those were the last things that I saw,

His touch and voice remained and not much more.

“I will resign myself to seeing black,

If you are with me,” I said. You will say

That I too much enjoy singing of lack,

Of annihilation and of world decay.

But England, which I loved, was under attack -

Though it is history’s best land - every day

From wreckers and a ruling elite class

Who pulled it down; so I don't have a choice.

No doubt my blindness was a punishment;

But while defenceless against outward surprise

In his voice there was a kindness of intent

I hadn’t heard before. Open your eyes

While you are dreaming in your dark casement:

Your eye can’t see, and yet your dream plays,

And you can shift your body round the room

While living in a vision and a dream.

Just so, though I was blind, I saw the light.

And I could see the intellectual order

That is usually invisible to sight.

“There are so few of us, we will stick together,”

The voice of my companion pierced the night,

It was that Harold Wilson at my shoulder

Who could not see and could not make a move.

He said: “Let’s talk. What do you complain of?”

So I said: “Now I see it. You, Wilson,

A leader who undid the hierarchy.

We were alive and we were only men

We needed rank and merit which are key;

And all of these were gone when I was born

Unleashing on the world mere anarchy.

Like Ezra Pound I was trapped in a tower

Criminalised and eternally poor.

“How I resent it, that I had no job

At university; could not ascend

Because the democratic soulless blob

Which ran the land wanted to kill the land.”

And he: “They socialised it. Here’ the rub:

It’s just what Tony Benn said, in the end:

The Socialists put Christ into Action

And rubbed God’s nose in it, in their perfection.”

Now Jesus said: “What did you do to Britain,

That place of order, merit, destiny?

Took Christ from it, and ruled it like a cretin.

Then let the keys go to the USA,

A place the leaders are routinely shot in,

As they assassinated JFK.

A nation ruled by secretive impulses,

Covert empires, vast wealth, eternal corpses.

“For where are they now, when I call them forth?”

He ended, and yet added: “You are the tribe,

The nation, the community, the faith,

You English. And see, when I raised you up

So many of you have preferred pure death.

The people who aspired to rule the globe

Decided to be Socialists instead

And had collapsed before the world ended.

“In court houses in Britain, in the last years,

They legalised a thousand awful crimes

And thought that state bureaucracy was Jesus.

From kindness they locked people in their homes,

From gentleness they jabbed them with a virus.

Using my name, until the end of times,

Saying ‘Christ is gentle, and there is no evil.’

Let’s go, now. Let proceed to the next level.

“I’ll lead you.” Then he raised me from the stone.

They say that France’s General de Gaulle

A man who fought the Germans at Verdun

And never compromised his land at all,

Loved one thing more than France: it was his Anne,

A daughter with Down’s, whom the general

Would hurry home to see, and reaching home

Went looking for upstairs within her room.

So after hours of shouting at Churchill,

Or fighting hard his nation’s enemies,

He suffered total defeat with a girl;

Bringing her gifts, devising silly plays

From love for her and her immortal soul.

A chivalry uncommon in our days.

Just so Christ the Destroyer for his part

Destroys our crimes, loves our eternal heart.

“Come on then, both of you.” As when a child

At summer in an English coastal town

Might lose its parents on a street or field

Next to the sea, terrified and alone;

Or like an unemployed man who has failed

To get a job or earn some pay again,

Feels an almost infinite love and kindness

Of strangers helping him in his distress

So I was then - and any man would be,

For instance, it is known de Gaulle of France

Was devout in his Christianity -

When God was guiding me with his own hands.

“What was your party?” Wilson said to me.

And I: “A matter of indifference.

I very much admired Anthony Blair,

And how he solved the first Kosovo war.

“I was a soldier for him, and was paid

To keep the Serbian people out of it.

In Bosnia when Paddy Ashdown played

The role of President I did my bit.

And followed Blair when we had occupied

Iraq; it was for Britain, so I thought.

But when I left and found myself alone

I recognised his party wasn’t mine.

“Blair was a globalist with one intent:

To unify the world with armed force,

To break all nations and what they have meant.

The EU, which we loved once, is of course

A means of universal government.

What party now? Our Royal Air Force,

At Pristina, we made room for the Russians

And organised a peace, sharing our rations.”