In the dark age everything changed.
Everything good became rearranged:
People were animals plowing the ground,
Filthy as rodents in plague ridden towns,
Barbarians enslaved all in their glory,
Idolized the loathsome hero of their story.
Century after century the horror abounds,
How life was cheap and death always near
By the poisonous waters and foul smelling air;
There is no greater sadness than those past years
Whose crimes of cruelty are still hard to bare.
O could it be forgotten now, the demons fled?
There were loud incantations in my head,
That on this wounded planet, in my time,
Are such visions of hope and the sublime-
The renaissance of wonder and technology,
Awakening from a long trance of brutality.
Or so I told myself, scarred by the sword of history-
How I would deny it all! An intoxicated fancy
Of impossible atrocities, impossible stupidity;
And yet I see the headlines in our coming age
How everything good becomes rearranged.
Once did spirits and witches rule the woodlands,
In the collective memory for which they stand;
The new emperor denies all science and change;
The spells are cast, the good is rearranged.
How cheap is life and death so near
As we forge another centennial of fear;
All is forgotten now, and not redeemed.
The past was an illusion of what it seemed;
See the dark age descend on our cities and fields.
There is no greater sadness: nothing is real.
Comments
I have spent this afternoon
I have spent this afternoon reading W.H. Auden and TS Eliot. There is a chord here in your poem, that puts me in mind of both those poets.
We as a race, don't learn do we?
I thoroughly enjoyed this, thank you for publishing.
Jx
cerainly Auden
Trying to respond to the madness around. "We must love another or die". This is a time when we all, poets and free thinkers, must try to engage against the destruction of hope. How long can this circus of falsity and backwardness continue?
I began the work trying to find some light in the dark ages, 500-1000 AD. The was some light, but that was a stretch, those times were pretty tough between the plague, vikings, and basic crumbling of humanity, philosophy and technology. Every day Trump gets us a little closer to the new dark ages. There was just a decade ago when "the end of history" was being proclaimed, as we were entering a golden age of science and communication. And yet the monster sorcerer of history comes back with a vengeance, like Yeats "rough beast about to be born" in Second Coming.
Thanks for your comment!
Turning and turning in the
Turning and turning in the widening gyre.......
Ok, should add Yeats into the poets pot too.
I caught the reference to Trump.
Jx
Strange
that the dark age of Europe dovetailed so neatly with the golden age of Islam.
and China and Kazaria,
and probably a few other places...more than anything this poem is about today, that we have a combination of Nero and Calligula in the seat of power. It is clear the emperor of the holy roman empire is mentally ill. (he's on his way to Rome right now, as I write this,no less!) And the fact that half the population doesn't see that...how could we not be in a new dark age?
The Golden age of Islam was indeed amazng, as was the Chinese before Confuscious. Then they fell into darkness, or were just basically intellectually stalled for a millenia. These are generalities, of course, but they are sad. Hence the poem, the Sadness. what of history? "An intoxicated fancy
Of impossible atrocities, impossible stupidity"