It’s been a long change since there’s been anything
Interesting in this powder blue sky, weeks
By human reckoning, and is there any other
Reckoning kind? Please? And still no reply.
There was a span of centuries when the dust
Of the supposedly dark ages carried more
And more grass pollens and other evidence
Of expanding grazing lands and farms. Hard
To say how long anyone down in the valleys
Thought it would go on. The glaciers thought
Nothing, of course, they only accepted, although
It’s their record we’ve most closely inspected.
Then drought, then plague, then several years
When the layers of ice suggested all was gone,
Before the signs of farming began to float in
Again, later the coal dust, later the atomic tests.
That’s the problem with apocalypse, so terrible
And final for so many individuals, as all
Individual lives must be, but so temporary
An inflection in the demographic curve, so
Temporary the few years of peace. It will come
Again, it must, but for now there is plenty
Of dust, of “whales in the oceans, fruit
And duvets, the whole sumptuous parade,”
This side the next abrupt discontinuity in the crust.
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