Poetry

Apocalypse 31

Just as a poet will compose his mind

And pull himself in tight in solitude

Close eyes and ears and make silence his friend,

In order to create a brand new world,

And cannot tolerate a noise of any kind,

Seeking external dark, so the inside

Can grow amain - so my environment

Was barren, empty, childless, and vacant.

You who have read this much, will read four more,

And see how the apocalypse concluded.

Scruton had led me with my Messiah,

Into a kind of catacomb surrounded

By deserts. Inside, there was Jeremiah

And, as my journey started, so it ended

Talking with prophets from the ancient school

Discussing with me how to exit hell.

It was a sort of schoolroom, and he spoke:

‘The kings of Judah couldn’t leave Egypt.

Our God released our people from that yoke.

Yet they went back to the place they had escaped.

The Kingdom of Israel was first sent back

To the stone age because it had not kept

Itself loyal to God. And in my time

Nebuchadrezzar fired Jerusalem.

‘Predicting this, and warning kings and princes

I was incarcerated in a well

Among the slime, thigh deep in carcasses.

They said of me I had betrayed them all.

In those last days, it was as clear as this:

Don’t put our soldiers past the Berlin wall

Or where the Warsaw Pact was on the map;

Don’t let the US colonise Europe.

‘But that is what they did in those last days.

Because the British princes, so to speak,

Were merely bankers, who financialise,

Whose greed is strong, whose loyalty is weak.

What follows? That the land declines, of course,

A client state. And Godless,’ so he spoke.

I said ‘Amen’, and others said the same,

And he: ‘The world has died before it’s time.’

I said to Jesus: ‘This man was the first

A suffering servant who could not be heard,

Ignoring whom, Jerusalem was lost;

So I. But is it true that I betrayed

My countrymen and country when I stressed

That we were fighting on the evil side?’

My lord did not reply, but rather said:

‘Let’s leave, let’s add more steps to those we’ve made.’

We went outside, but not before goodbyes

To many others, English Christians,

Men who knew how to pick out good allies,

Ensure our national independence.

Like Nelson, who was there with both his eyes

And others who defended us from France,

Like Henry Fifth, knowing that politics

Should keep us safe from foreign heretics.

Outside the ruins and our sad exile.

‘Who was it, then,’ I said, ‘that ruined us,

Betrayed the land, and made us sell our soul?’

My Lord and master, then: ‘One Ben Wallace,

And Richie Sunak, Hunt, more or less all

The latter-day officials of the place

That was once justly called a Parliament.’

Now I’ll describe the pathway where we went.

By my distant acquaintance with the drug

That men call marijuana, I compare

The world then with the nasty stomach ache

That weed brings on when it mixes with fire

And drifts into a body. There was fog

Inside my eyes and in my mind for sure,

And shame, and that dim feeling of no past

And no tomorrow that the enthusiast

For drugs enjoys. The panic was in me

Which you can see in mammals in a cage

Whose only instinct is to get away.

That’s what it looked and felt like at that stage.

In springtime if you cut an elder tree

And strip and cut it doing such damage

That it should never live again, by June

The tree is bigger than it’s ever been.

The canopy of leaves is wide and bright

The branches stretch and reach out into flower.

But man and history cannot be cut

And when, by going back in time, I saw

The trunk of mankind and the very root

There were just little creatures hiding there

The antecessors of all human kind

Surviving by escaping underground.

And yet, the very few people who lived

To go back to that root in time and space

From which we came, and so as to be saved,

I saw them here and there head of us

Across the cracked land that seemed to be paved

With limestone, white and grey and featureless.

There was a soul making his weary way

As hard as hawthorne he would need to be.

I stopped him, crying: ‘You there wait a while,

Let’s walk a bit,’ and I ran with my master.

‘Good day,’ he said. ‘My name is Percival.’

And I: ‘The man in charge of that disaster

When Singapore, the British orient pearl,

Was given to Japan? You could not muster

The smallest resistance, despite the fact

You had an army, still fully intact.’

And he, still tall and thin and sensitive,

Replied: ‘You think I did not warn Churchill

For years before, that there were not enough

Guns and artillery. The place would fall

No matter what. I let the men survive.’

‘Pardon me, Sir. I once had an uncle

Who sailed that year to fight the Emperor

Of Japan. He arrived at your harbour.

‘The Japanese had taken it already.

They caged him, spiked him with malaria.

And you did that.’ And he: ‘I did my duty.

I will not argue over details here.

I have walked here, upright in mind and body,

Because God knows I have nothing to fear.

The war in Europe had consumed England

And that far eastern outpost had no friend.’

So I considered this, and bit my tongue.

‘You are a clever man,’ I said, ‘Tell me,

Where will this pathway go? It is not long

Before the end, the Prophet said.’ And he:

‘This pilgrimage, if I am not far wrong,

Is not to specific territory,

But inside, to the edge of the within.

Just two steps left to total extinction.’