Poetry

Apocalypse 5

The ship yawed and then rolled on different axes

Which caused me belly pains and then a dread

Came on me like a sickness, so I asked this:

“What should I fear before God’s judgement seat?”

My lord said nothing. I said “What perplexes

Is, I noticed with the years that where I trod

The path I took I look back on it now

And see too many friends back there, brought low.

“You know them, God. But in particular

One of my family that I’ve left behind.

I feel remorse that they are in the rear,

Those sick and injured in body and mind

And how I might have caused all that horror.

I was a stranger to them in the end.

This is my fault. And did I make these ruins?”

My knees gave way as I made these confessions.

The man, my master, who had took me out

Of real devastation on the earth

Placed both his palms upon my lowered head.

“I was too cold, an old man in my youth,”

I said, and he: “Enough, it’s understood.

Look at the past and future, see them both.

Seek out those Hebrews that you met before

They’ll know you now, after this metanoia.”

And so, I made my way toward the bridge

And found those men who wrote the Hebrew bible.

“You could go with us, on this pilgrimage,

So sit down now a while at our table.”

This was Isaiah, who in his own age

Instructed God’s elect in their survival.

And there were others there of intellect

Who built in spirit, never derelict.

They were seated, and calm, and I sat down

And I was happy to be recognised

By them as if I had received the crown

And been made king and ruler of the West.

“What’s going on?” he said, “You aren’t alone

In knowing nothing and being surprised.

I myself asleep, dreaming of paradise,

Dead or asleep I’ve been, three thousand years.

“Some were spirits in hell and some in heaven

And others were purged in that sleeply place.

But every one of them, the seven billion

That died before your time, and those of yours

Who died when the Earth died are now arisen.

We have a job, to scrape existence of every last trace

Of human kind. And I have heard the claim,

That this job must proceed to the start of time.

“Work parties for this work of deconstruction

Are being put together on the shore

To turn material into abstraction

To empty space. You have heard this before.

The start line for the task, the start of this action,

Is on the beach where our boat comes to moor.”

My heart sank when I heard repeated here

What I had heard from Christ, and refused to store.

“I had not stored it in my memory

Though I have heard the same thing from my master,”

I said. “Don’t let this dark fact blind your eye.

Our God is making new things from disaster,”

He said, and: “When the people were set free

To live again, and when the trumpet blast

Had sounded, and the hammer slammed down hard

They realised their tyre still had some tread.

“It is a second life and new creation.

True, those who were not baptised in the church

Or were attached to things and to distraction

Were shovelled back again in one great batch;

You saw them turn aside when given the option

And how they turned back from the gloomy beach.

The peaty earth has covered them again

Their story ends there in oblivion.

“But we must push on now and do our job.”

Here, I was going to ask about my loved ones,

But he knew me as if he had my crib:

“They’ve gone ahead”. Then, I made no response.

The boat had stopped, a gangway and a rope

Had been laid out to disembark us hence;

Down there were crowds in such insane profusion

And yet, I found my lord in that confusion.

Upon the plains which were in front of us

The unmistakable outline of a tree;

It had the leaves and branches of an ash

But so enormous that it had to be

The world tree or the axel and the axis

Which went beyond the ground into the sky

And in the pagan stories of the Norse

Held all creation down like some great noose.

From such a tree Wotan hung by the neck

Or by the foot, as some say, making runes

And where the wolves of hell are kept in check.

But trees have shallow roots, so that when winds

And storms of rain like those a few years back

We see the roots spread out through land and stones

But not down, like a mirror image trunk,

But shallow, which is not what you’d have thunk.

True to their task, and terrible I found it,

There were vast numbers pulling at the thing,

“People with ropes and fires are all around it,

Cutting the post on which all learning hung,

And culture and order” I shouted out, astounded.

I turned toward my leader. Them among

Turning to look again, I saw there spirits

Or devils more like, digging around the roots.

And that magnificent creature seems to shake

While people like flocks of birds did their duty.

Among the wreckers I saw those who do work

In banking, services, in the City

That caste which ruled the world for England’s sake

And for the Corporation since the day

When Parliament won in the Civil War

And gave to money the control of law.

They of the City made money a force,

When previously, the king and land were power.

And just as I had been bound to the prophets,

And found them in this chaos, so much more

The old bankers and financial experts

Had congregated here, bringing their fire

To kill and set alight the central frame

Of all our world and set it all aflame.

“Nobody is more practiced nowadays

In ruining a land than city bankers,”

My lord said, but I will not spell out verse

Which rhymes with these words; let’s proceed with blinkers.

Toward the tree we two made a direct course,

To watch how using ropes, and tools as anchors,

The wealthy or once wealthy men and women,

Attacked, and was each provoked by a demon.

They did this horrid work under compulsion.

But there among the tree roots which I saw

Emerging from the ground I saw emerging

A face I knew: “Are you here?” I asked her.

It was an old boss I, in my own fashion,

Had worked for when I worked on EC4,

Old Street, London. “I died eight years ago”

She said, “Old age took me. You didn’t know.”

“You sacked me,” I said, and she thus replied:

“You were no use to me. But I loved my boys.

Yet see them now, at this, now they have died.

I can’t endure to see with my own eyes

The ruin of the world that I have loved.

I will not run in this appalling race.”

I said goodbye again to my old boss,

Entangled in the roots there as she was.