Phillip Medhurst

And yet I hope that soon this week will end,

That dawn will break, and broken hearts will mend

So that a wholesome Sabbath day will bring

Enlightened rest; that birds again will sing

Instead of fearsome rustlings in the dark;

And the whole world will be a pleasant park:

The wood in which we wandered just a copse,

A refuge for the timid beast, which hops

To cover, then comes out at will to see

The sunlight play, no need at all to flee

From hungry predator. A dream! As such

It does not heal, but just provides a crutch

For fractured consciousness, which seeks in vain

To mend its broken world, where only pain

Defines reality, and we are lame,

And cannot run, compete against, or tame

The ravening beast which seeks us, and devours

The meagre gleanings of successful hours.

The dawn will show a good God to be lies,

And noonday sun expose a Lord of Flies.

I know the time is nigh: the global scale

Has tipped towards destruction. Soon the tale

Of all man’s deeds and misdeeds will just stop,

And end in silence. Sin’s ripe fruit will drop

And smash upon the ground of all our being.

That ground may then remain, all else then fleeing,

As cold and hard as it has ever been,

Unheard, unsmelt, untouched and all unseen

By anything that mars the pristine scape

Of nothingness with any wanton shape

Irrelevant to Being-in-Itself –

All life placed on that continental shelf

Where fossils lay well out of sight and out

Of mind, mere rocks embedded there to flout

The law of life which says that we must change,

And we must use our power to arrange

Some continuity of gene, no noise

To rattle or disturb death’s equipoise.

So IDA is our perpetuity,

Extinct and petrified where none can see.