POETRY
‘Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold’
By: Roger Stennett - United Kingdom
W. B . Yeats said it, way back then in 1920.
And now, years on, it is more so.
What ‘beast’ its time come,indeed slouches
Towards Jerusalem to be born
In this ‘Second Coming’ of what ?
No Shepherds. No stars.
No prophecy. No candlelight in Mangers.
This Second Coming’s labour pains
Are long and loud and tortured
No natural birth. No Yoga breathing.
No water birth or slip and sliding
‘Just one more’ . No this Second Coming
Breaches into the world, causing pain
And destroying Joy. not creating.
Who even knows the face we might see
Finally when mucus and blood are wiped
And what eyes might stare back at us
From soiled swaddling clothes ?
We live in Anarchy. No question anymore
Certainty walked out of the door
Decades ago, leaving a void
Too broad to bridge. An abyss too deep.
Beware. As Nietzsche once said
‘Beware, if you peer into the Abyss
The Abyss also peers back into you’
And it’s true. Malign eyes have seen us
And ‘marked our card’ . Trusted institutions
Have betrayed us. Church and State.
Things and people who once did ‘good’
Sing and dance to a very ‘different tune’.
Meanwhile inside the modern Manger
Moans can be heard.
No Caesarean birth is possible
‘The Second Coming’ is announced in pain.
Pain is its mood music. Pain its theme tune.
Each day I wake with even worse news
Emblazoned across the media
Imagine what we are yet to see
When finally the child of ‘our times’
Is finally delivered and its chord cut ?
The Apocalypse smiling back up at us
From a midden. From soiled straw
Blood and shit stained. Monstrous.
What ‘Mooncalf’ ? What ‘Changeling’ ?
No ‘Second Coming’, really.
Rather the first arrival of a different ‘child’
Indeed, ‘What rough beast, its hour come
Round at last, slouches towards Jerusalem ?
Roger Stennett
UK
Comments