The Darkling Thrush

It’s bad, kids.

I leant upon a coppice gate

      When Frost was spectre-grey,

And Winter’s dregs made desolate

      The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

      Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

      Had sought their household fires.

 

The land’s sharp features seemed to be

      The Century’s corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

      The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

      Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

      Seemed fervourless as I….

The darkness enfolds our land. Civility and, therefore, civilization deteriorate at an accelerating pace. No one with wit can  deny this.  And yet, the land resembles nothing so much as a giant ostrich farm, every hole in the ground filled with ostrich crania.