Poetry

Apocalypse 33

The siren used to sound out near midday

The eleventh of November in the autumn

On Queen’s Square, and a bugler played Reveille

The wake-up call on the town square in Wrexham.

It was a sombre peaceful melody.

The same noise sounded in this other kingdom

From outer darkness unto inner darkness.

An angel blew it, warning like a light house

To let us know that we were near the end

And safe. This angel was dressed like a monk

In drab and stiff material of the kind

They use to make sandbags. And now I think

That I should take my reader by the hand

And warn you forcibly with pen and ink,

For what happened to me will find you too,

You’ll die again, if you don’t have virtue.

My Lord said this: ‘You’ve died once in the flesh.

You gave your body up. And that was easy.

And now your spirit will die in a flash.

But don't allow it! Watch out! Don’t be lazy!’

He spoke like that to me, and my message

To you is this: at the end things go crazy.

Explosions, fireballs, burning, second death:

They only kill you if you don’t have faith.

So keep on going when you hear the horn.

No matter what. That’s my advice to you.

The air grew thick with smoke as we went on

The sky grew red, the land was on fire, too.

My breath was laboured, as if I would drown,

It was so hot; the pressure of air high,

The ground shook, then a flood of fire and light

Shot from the earth and flew into the night.

I shouted to my Lord: ‘Will I survive?’

And he: ‘That comet killed the dinosaurs.

You see it in reverse. And you will live

With what is golden in you, what is yours.

I mean the love of truth and facts will serve

To make your mind stronger than all these fires;

While justice or fairness in your decision

Will let a man see through the smoke of passion.

‘Justice, and courage, and wisdom will be

What lasts when world and body pass away.

These qualities of soul, they do not die.

While pride is fine, only humility

Will do before God, or in your own eye.’

The flaming oxygen was in the sky

But it retreated backward so the air

Was clear, and the destruction was over.

But still, like that fire that Moses once saw

Around a tree which did not fail and burn,

From which the voice of God came loud and clear,

This fire and conflagration carried on,

A supernatural burning everywhere

Which heated but did not consume my skin.

‘And this is faith, and love at work,’ he said,

‘And hope,’ I added. He nodded his head.

The friend of Percy Shelley used to laugh

And call him Shiloh, which means ‘Messiah’,

Because the name is similar enough

And Shelley in his youth tried to aspire

To save mankind with all the liberal stuff

He wrote. I do not say I saw him there,

But those who denied God and with God rhyme

Were in the path we took, burned in the flame.

The air was clear, an unobstructed breeze

Conveyed the horn’s sound which made me aware

That other people were making their ways.

Came two dim figures walking in a pair

The one was as if crippled at the knees

Hunched over, talking and breaking the air

With walking stick and never-ending chatter;

His friend was silent, listening to the latter.

An engineer he seemed to be in his dress.

‘A Jew of Linz, a Danish Christian,

The theologians of this emptiness,’

My master said. Pointing to Wittgenstein:

‘The richest man in Europe more or less;

He gave away the whole of his fortune,

To study engineering at Cambridge

And do away with spurious knowledge.’

I looked around, and stepped out of the way:

‘They taught me everything I do not know,’

I said, ‘And my love of eternity.

I cannot interrupt him, my hero.’

The two of them passed by, not seeing me,

They were a hundred years apart, those two,

But spoke like childhood friends who all at once

Talk as if there had never been absence.

And then another pair of characters

A man and wife, quite young but tired and old,

Like children with the weariness of years.

She pulled her clothes close to her in the cold,

And he had linked his arm inside of hers.

The woman noticed me and turned and smiled

They stopped before me when they had got near

And also seemed to see me great master.

‘These are the greatest criminals of all,’

My Lord said, holding them with tenderness,

‘The closest friends of God; they suffered hell,

The grandfather and mother of the race,

Adam and Eve.’ They embraced me as well.

‘I manufactured you for a million years

To be my friend, and to live in the world;

To talk and be with God whenever called.’

My Lord said this, and, aimed his eyes at me:

‘I made you to be equals to my Son.

But every moment drove you further away.

The world obscured me. Now the world is gone.

The friendship lasts, although you had to die

To be with God and know me once again.

The love and friendship as it was before

Because you heard and respected my law.

‘Distance from God was your inheritance,’

He said, and finished. Light was coming back

Such clarity as I had not known since

The day of rebirth and the global wreck.

Now see, I walked with Christ and Adam once.

But the ultimate and the final attack

Was waiting in the future for me, so

Prepare for it, and let this chapter go.