Endings

Sometimes I look at the world and despair. Not all the time, because there are still a myriad small acts of kindness, often unseen, certainly rarely blazed across the headlines in the news. But this poem is a reflection on the wars, the lack of sustainability that our consumer society engenders, and the poverty elsewhere, and how we try to shut out those who come to our castle walls while we remain relatively secure within.There is also history there, of how the great and mighty empires of Britain and France divided up the Middle East after the Great War and set in place a ticking time bomb, which as we know, has gone off in many lands. That's what this poem is all about.

Endings

Anger, hate, fear: where will it end?

And consumer society, spend spend:

This is our world, a world in such pains

Like Marley,  burdened by many chains

And most of our own making. Our legacy

To pass on, devouring with such rapacity

All the resources of such a finite planet,

And as thoughtless as a hungry gannet

Soaring high, like Icarus, but then the fall

Can we not listen, hear the warning call

Of climate change, of famine, of war

So rich in things, and yet so very poor

While others starve, in war torn lands

A legacy of empire, from imperial hands

Came the great divides to the Middle East

And now the unleashing of the beast

See the might armies clash by night

Seeking conquest, where might is right

And nature red in tooth and claw

Opening all the terrors of that door

The land laid bare, no food to eat

A black day when there is no wheat

The belly swollen, and children die

Cursed be the fear and migrant lie

The pale rider rides across the world

With death his banner now unfurled

And I see the white horse on the vale

The white rider, come beyond the veil

It is not yet midnight, there is still time

Before the witching hour, fateful chime

Marking an end of all that we hold dear

And that time is drawing very near