by Matthew Thomas Wall
It’s hard not to feel apocalyptic when
The television screams of storm and flood
And war and guns and death and blood
And famine and drought and tears and diseases
Spreading like wildfire through savaged lands.
It’s hard not to feel apocalyptic when
The newspapers rail against a State
Of lying, bribing, power-mad psychopaths,
Duplicitous warmongers, fiddlers and fudgers,
Demagogue devils in a Parliament of doom.
It’s hard not to feel apocalyptic when
Nature misfires, blooms flowers too early
And dissolves all the seasons in an Alzheimer soup.
The skies grow angrier and rivers burst banks,
All boundaries are broken, all precedents smashed.
It’s hard not to feel apocalyptic when
Decadence drips from every billboard,
Screen and hoarding, lauding our lusts and appetites
Shouting down the voice of grace
And drowning the spirit in a well of noise.
It’s hard not to feel apocalyptic when
Cruelty is dressed up as freedom of speech
And ignorance and prejudice are now become virtues
And courtesy, manners, are trampled, disgraced,
And all is inverted, subverted, traduced.
It’s hard not to feel, it’s hard not to feel
But at least we do feel, at least we do
Feel righteous anger and fury at injustice
And hope and love and shame, and shame,
And shame at just how far we have let things go.
23 January 2007
