Saturday 10 July 2010

End of the World Poem

The great disaster has come, and
wasted Hastings, sacked Southampton,
turned Portsmouth into Pompeii;

glowing embers drift south, down
over the south downs.
The towers of London are broken to blocks.

Canterbury interred and buried
under debris. Dover over,
Brighton dark, Bournemouth burned.

The sun rises the way it used to set,
purple, the herald of blackness.
Clouds occlude the higher sky.

The air is foul and not breathable, which is why
there are no creatures to breathe it.
Static intereference is dustily literalised.

This is the way the hemisphere ends
Neither bang nor whimper: a Rothko.
The Thames flows backwards. Red hills heave.

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