CHORUS FROM A TRAGEDY

When did culture sever itself from nature?

Broken on the wheel of civilization

in between the mindless monkey and this

                         concluding endgame.

Primal reluctance hastened us to the conclusion

of our conjugal promise, and we fell out

with the cycles of earth, springtime, summer

                                      autumn and winter.

Darkness fled from its rightful place in night-time

purged by technology: fire first, followed by

bottling the lightning, relentless to tired eyes,

                                      banishing shadow.

Numbly frog sat warming there in the saucepan,

now it is stewing;  the nests of fledglings shit filled;

fleeing irrational fears for utopian promise

                               straight into hellmouth.

Noise of cars and machines, jet planes around us,

choking, dire terror, then the great Pacific

and the Atlantic won’t stay low forever,

                               rising to meet us.

This the price of grey and dull acquiescence;

thinking ourselves more angel-bred than primate;

eyes on other worlds, heedless to this one.

                             So fucking stupid.