The woman time forgot

Is beautiful today

Moulded in clay, frozen

And unrepentant.

She will tear you apart

With a look, or, maybe, a knife.

This lake by which

She lives is frozen.

Dare we skate

On such thin ice?

Glaciers melt

And water haunts the air

Birds migrate and block the sun

And, still, we have not fled

All that we once remembered

Cities, technologies, many things.

We remain beautiful but hopeless

This is no time for singing.

The sterility of winter predominates

But we are never bored

With pure survival.

Intermittently, the earth shakes

Another nuclear explosion

In the war zone – tipping the axis

Into a space undelivered, by this or any planet.

We cannot deny our eyes and ears.

Horror infests the glowing soil

Of the central land masses:

Eurasia and the Americas.

Africa is already gone,

As is Australasia. Knowing this is agony.

Ghosts have fled with us to the poles

Brilliantly deniable, but nonetheless, here.

We must assign duties to these ghosts

Even amidst this useless exile

A cold dream of contempt cover our tracks.

 

 

 

.