Читать книгу Catastrophic - Humphrey Hartney - Страница 9

Not Achilles’ shield

Not the ingenuity of Theseus

Nor even Odysseus with Athena in his ear

Could stand against the might, the ferocious awe

The wrath and the vengefulness of this small

Dead branch just lying there.

The size, almost, of a human arm

And with a slight bend – like an elbow even,

Twigs jutting out at one end – three fingers or so

The others absent

– as if lost in battle long ago.

It lay in the scrub in what was,

once upon a time a valley

Dripping with dew, moist, fertile,

but now

This virile “arm” has a singular power.

It lies in how dry it is – profoundly dry –

and here it all starts…

With the vast curve of night

Wildly polarized

Its clouds freakishly underlit

by strange, stunning flashes and

Instead of rain

Thousands of dry lightning strikes

crack our nerves to a shaking pain

as they fall and strike

it is flash One Thousand and Eight

(they can count them from space)

splits this arm

perfectly into flame.

Then, this new child of the great dark nowhere

Moves like a smouldering wound

and rises around that branch.

The young smoke lives – curling about like question marks.

And a persistent, gentle breeze

like two lips pressed

blows to please it the most…

A bank of purple wildflowers

Half asleep watch on as the smoke becomes a waking flame.

The new fire dances like

a little orange flower at first

amazed with its new life

And a new light

deadly strange

is in the world,

And long, long before dawn.

It offers thankful prayers to the breeze

and burns on.