Wilderness

 

‘Angered seasons have ere now’, creak the bones

 Of the old, ‘laid cities to waste. Now time

Will uproot from our earth the enraged stones

     And heap them upon our heads’. But the grime

 

Of their dreads leaves the young unmoved and sure

In changing with the changings of the free

World to find  horizons broader and more

     Alluring. This time's different. It's Me.

 

My land is dying, street by crumbling street.

'This used to be ...’ and ‘Here we used to have ...’

I moan, and children flung ere it was meet

     From this their cocoon, cannot laugh and brave

 

With their mocking ‘You should write a memoir’

This blitz of reminiscence. Their mute nods

Mourn one more thing swallowed up by the war:

     Youth and old age dueling with time’s rods.