Last Days of the Empire 7

Why Does the Sun Keep on Shining?

When the angel of death was scheduled to pass over
We followed all the expert advice
The sygil of our virtuousness over the door
And to abjure thought of conspiracies, as genre or discrete
These being as ever Satan’s device –
Especially those someone else promoted –
Well we did as advised and so we huddled through the thick-coated
Dark, broken by weird lights, inconstant yet concrete
Enough, and the barking of dogs, and knew these were the signs
That out there the world was ending, out beyond our retreat
And how would we cope with a world come to an end?
A fatuous question for sure, but hope follows its fatuous routines
As long as bodies touch, friend clings to friend

And so it was with us. Appearance of life
Is not proof of life of course, but we went out and embraced
The appearance and were content – there now, it’s all done
And what’s that still shining? Well, the sun!
But like every appearance – love, you smile,
Love’s like a bar-heater, glows a while
After the current’s turned off, and strife 
Remains the default, and a truce between he and she
Never in the offing. So with the world ended, we file
Into the brilliant city – Jerusalem is its name
Shaped, or misshaped, by lies, and on its well-kept boulevards
And beneath its bright-painted concrete towers
We learn to trot carefully, like prim poodles, tell me
It doesn’t live up to all of its fame! 

Now day and night and the scales that balance the two
Tip towards the dark, but we tell each other
The everything will be all right. I guess we should pray
For all the warriors, and other crazies, sister and brother
Who – well, have tipped over, for whom a new 
Spring will never happen. Their great boon
Is that they don’t complain, not like the self-satisfied
Survivors, the great rump, who’ve smiled and lied
Their way back. Ach the angel of death’s a balloon.
But the fire in the night, people call it the burning
Bush because of the voice inside it,
Cleanses you see, you can run from it or ride it
Still it runs like a straight track, neither tipping nor turning –
It’s a contract that never quite burns away.

Last Days of the Empire 6

Under the Bridge

It was night and the little ones huddled under the bridge
And debated self-sacrifice. “I don’t see the point”
The Fox said, ”if you don’t offer yourself
They’ll come and take you anyway”. “Not you, Mr Smelly,”
The Rabbit scoffed, twitching her ear coquettishly,
“But I, on the other hand.... Cosmetics would collapse
Without my connivance.” A sackless beagle-dog came along
A bandylegged clumsy fellow with big feet
One of which squashed a Guinea-pig, who died
With scarcely a squeak. “- it’s been decreed,” he said,
“That Sex is to get the snip. From now on anyone who links
The fuck-action with fecundity will face the ultimate sanction.”
He glanced down ruefully. “I thought it would mean
I could rodger anything that moved, but I’ve lost the inclination.”
Meanwhile a concert of Mice reported that the brothers
And sisters were to be raised in special nurseries, kind ones
Such that they’d never miss the sunlight and the sweet air
But a Pangolin argued there was still a roaring trade
In exotica from warm countries where, it was said,
They had a different attitude to death, and self-sacrifice
Was in their DNA, it was said, like a sort of splice....

Meanwhile up on his rostrum the devil-pope
Was inveighing on that very subject, his mouth
Twisted in a grimace that he believed could pass for compassion	
The sons of his former friends were mostly dead now, but hope,
He noted, lay in some proposed new hatcheries in the south
(When questioned on this, his eyes grew occluded)
Conventional war, he remarked briskly, had gone out of fashion
Which meant good new jobs for an army of persuaders
And who could grumble at that? And he concluded
That anyone using an alphabet not papally decreed
Was probably a lemming, so his eye
Twitched towards the precipice nearby
“And what that means we’re all agreed”
He joked – “but well done, all my brave crusaders”.

So the little ones huddled, and every time the bridge
Shook shuddered as some juggernaut rolled over.
“The Juggernaut, don’t you know,“  the Macaque explained
Attempting to soothe their anxiety, “was an arrangement
Set down by no less than the Krishna avatar
In the good time before the Raj reigned
And to throw yourself under its wheels and be squashed
Was considered the summit of attainment.
Now all the people are required to do
Is wear masks and keep their hands well washed
And turn a blind eye if any evil arise
Or even better two 
For they fear all those who use their eyes....”
So the little ones argued over rebellion, and curses, and flame
Enveloping the unprotected curtilage
But always it came back to the same
Conclusion: too small, and just too few.

Last Days of the Empire 5

A Blessing for the Road

We’ve set them out onto their road
And though we miss them, for sure
And the house is a husk, and our daily routines poor
Substitute for the four-square load
That was once ours to carry, and when we look out
Onto what road we’ve sent them on
And our hearts shrink with dismay
We can always comfort ourselves with the thought
That we’re part of something bigger, and everyone
Feels what we feel, suffers the same loss
And spins out the same old floss
About the circle of life, how it can’t be any other way 

Haha sterile old maniacs, did you never think
What the consequences would be
Of your rabid vivisections, of the self-inflicted cruelty
Wherever the bright spirit showed, not even blink
At the daily atrocities committed on soil and sea
 - Never mind, you were not to know
You took the way of the sterile ignoramus
But we’re sending them into a world that, for all the circuitry
Has never been quite so
A world with no horizons, where they’re tasked
With no exploration, where questions have been given answers
That should only have been asked

Well I say bless them, for they may yet be forging
Towards better than we think. The old autocracies
Re-assert themselves, it’s true
And tyrants both old and new have come roaring back
But the fire I see engorging
All of the West may be purgative; whatever we lack
May become bounty, our great policies
Come to nothing, arrogance and possessions husks in the wind
That signifies the end of all reason and sense;
So this is a blessing for the road, here’s bread and drink
(It’s not your favourite but it’ll do)
Which is plain and nourishing, will nourish innocence
And innocence, when you think
Is all that counts when there’s nothing left to rescind.

Last Days of Empire 3

High flying can damage your health

The Pope stumbled and fell down
As he was climbing the stairs
Up to the plane, or podium
I forget which, and the crowd that studied him
Called it an omen, of a sort,
Of the downfall of the West
Of Christendom, of the best
But I just stroked my wise chin-hairs
And remarked with a nonchalant snort
That I’d thought him just a clumsy old clown,
Always had – just a clumsy old flatulent clown.

But the lad got up and laughed “all’s well!”
And because he was the pope
We all believed him. “It’s all been good”
We said, “till now – so why would
Anything change?” And so the hard sell
Of happiness went on, and with no
Seer to see we’d reached the end of our rope – 
In fact ropes were banned, by papal Decree –
We laughed how we’d sunk so low, so low
Yet we still could jamboree

But back to the stairs where the slip-up occurred
The small faux pas I mentioned
Of course it had not been planned
And I think was not divinely intentioned
So neither God’s famous Thing, nor His Word
Were in question. The stairs were just too steep;
It was some kind of portable stand
Erected for yet another
Of those public performances, and brother
The old soul really wanted to sleep
He thought he’d just climb up to bed and sleep.