AMONG THE RUINS

In the dying dusk I set out

yesterday, with Christopher's The Death of Grass

in my hands; long delayed

I walked through the brooding,

empty streets and lanes, and

the slushed path down to the valley

and up to the village gloom,

where in my eyes the ghosts

of peoples dead and buildings torn

mingled with what remains,

the feeble remnants of life and men.

The night fell, my hands grew chill;

around the pools of light cast

by lamp-posts I kept reading the

comfortable English catastrophe of future past,

while thinking of the uncomfortable ones,

personal and global, closing in.

So I walked and arrived, in the dark.

06.03.2020