green

Michael Whiteside

hammered angularity of metal spars
adrip with rainy-coloured glass sheets sprawls
at this far western edge of western land
stabs at films of dim grey mist and cuts
through creeping nature’s moss and moist recess
such as once made the teeming mud pregnant
bringing out to day a resin chant
of green, with peatsmell borne on flowing air
to echo down the tunnel to the now
but you can hear, just cup your hand around
your ear, how faintness has begun to tinge
the song with time, the sound has quietly fallen
by a breath, the parts are not all sung
today

once, a schoolboy, I was taught to hope
for turning of the world at bay, that green
would yet bestir her vast, slow frame
to face this upstart vandal, dreary goth
who came and set his ploughshare to the root
I learned that green would conquer glass at last
and snap cement like matchsticks, that the old
great balance would return, but now, I know
of vaster things less slow than she, I know
of greed that spans her roundness now, with ease
and no returning of her sway, I know
of one last way, not that of crawling back
to peace, but that, in death, she takes our life
for good

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