"Hate was just a failure of imagination." Graham Greene

Apocalypse

Mourn all the many things that have been lost under our watch,

all the living things that have died

and disappeared before our very eyes

without the burden of bearing witness.

You see that from these losses grows a hyper vigilance

towards each another, a constriction of freedoms,

a self censoring of thought and hesitation of action.

The world will no longer withstand the individual.

Run to the woods! Embrace all for one last time!

This desperate need to unleash will never die!

As in Shostakovich’s Symphony Number Five

where one can take the time to mourn that everything comes to an end;

a gorgeous lament as the ominous overbearing takes over.

The battle for this false world we’ve created will continue

without you, as you lie swaddled in leaves and humus,

waiting for time to slow and the moon to give up its secrets.