Waldsterben

Come, walk with me, my love.
As the dusk gathers, like a fist tight about us,
And the mists rise
Sulph’rously from the tarmac,
We will search for a single breeze
That does not remind us
Of a waiting-room in Hell.
It is nine o’clock, and all is not well;
For the trees are quietly dying,
Almost unnoticed, certainly unmourned.
On every horizon we see
Denuded branches stretched in rigor mortis
As in an outcry against the very heaven
Which sent its’ acids down.
One-hundred-year-old giants
Are balding at the crown;
And below, skeletal boughs point accusatory fingers.
Autumnal yellows dapple the foliage in July:
The woods are jaundiced.
And the night drops by,
Gate-crasher at a frenzied fète.
And as the swallow’s song grows silent,
Mankind is yet
Subliminating fears,
Attending to the trivial
With the industry of ants,
And reckoning in years.
Politicians propose piffling antidotes,
The same to be effected---well, later on.
We will get what we deserve.
Come, embrace me under this elm
While its’ leaves are still abundant.
Two seconds more of cosmic time,
And our Borgia work will have become redundant,
Sending us on the downward curve
Of evolution’s scale.
And will Nature have the last laugh,
After we are gone?
Will she re-do all
That we’ve undone
As willing accomplices to those few
Who profited so greatly
From this end of season sale?
Kiss me while the good-night song
Of the lark sounds sweet on the fetid air.
Whisper me tales of today’s travails,
While I’m still dark, and you’re still fair.
Make me laugh, make me sigh and simper;
Make me forget Macleish’s line,
That: ‘Not with a bang, but a whimper.’

July, 1983