Читать книгу Catastrophic - Humphrey Hartney - Страница 5

Sitting in the garden –

trying to wake,

nursing coffee,

hands warm.

The breeze comes at me

– turns into a wind, suddenly,

strong as a boxer

It’s been sparring like this all night –

finding its strengths.

Dawn’s cusp - and to confuse us all

It’s cool and refreshing now

– but by 10

Hot, blistering.

A divine wrath to ensure

all undergrowth is dry like

hell is dry

ready for new life

transposed

ecstatically

in flame.

By 4 this afternoon:

– all the hairdryers of the world turned on

– all roads hot coals

– all trees baked cores

– and this ancient, leather, bellows,

sky and earth, wheezing up,

creaking back into use

– a global blacksmith’s forge

gusts and black/red coals

all night long

and hammer falls of heat

and sparking collapse

re-smithing our minds into

one single thought: flame

and how far flame will spread.

But here, now

just before dawn

Some great audience sits,

and silently…

Already the memorial concert.

Paused at its breathless, quietest peak.

The ballad of the new sun begins and they all

Hold their lighters, their candles high…

It’s November

But more like Easter

Crowds of souls carrying lights

Circumambulating the great

cathedral

that will be this day…

By terror-filled and awe-filled rite

The flame begins to pray to itself.

It asks once more to be larger than life,

To apocalypse us all, to ensure

That only flame itself

is our salvation…

because

Only when we are burnt completely

Will we be safe

Only then, holocaust;

the fully charred offering made –

Will there be

at last

peace

and nothing left to burn.