Monday, 22 October 2018

The Red Drenched Hill




This is....
The Red Drenched Hill


Lit by low-slung sun, 
This is the red drenched hill, 
I am going to die on.
 Like a moth 
in a trial of fire. 
Until all love and hurt is gone. 
Because 
Everything ends up used. 
Scattered and ever abused.
 And you keep on coming 
Round to play. 
As if you’ve not got the news: 
I feel nothing for you
still. 
You see I see you from way up here, 
Wonder if you can climb high, 
Now I’ve cut my hair short 
Let the stormy clouds rot. 
I’ve no need of them 
in my eyeliner sky. 
When you cannot reach me. 
Gravestones sewn beneath me. 
And the weakening sun ray.
 By the weary sigh on 
sigh. 
If you want some advice. 
If there’s any left to give. 
Dismount from your high horse. 
It’s dying in pain of your loss. 
It doesn’t make any odds. 
When all sunlight leaves us 
Don’t think darkness frees us 
We intertwine like lover’s brides
 And call out
 To our gods. 
Even while Hell is in our eyes. 
You know, 
We’re too busy feeding robots 
Because we’re all just robots 
Programmed to eat donuts 
And self-destruct a wish that we die. 
Make no mistake 
I feel nothing for you 
On this hill. 
Time heals nothing around me 
No cure has yet come found me.
Loss is never found. 
It is never more healed. 
Alone, watching all down below. 
I realise the carnage 
See the tragic damage 
Smell the smoke of Carthage 
And there’s one truth that I know: 
When everything is on fire 
That can catch on fire 
My love lies still beside me, 
Burning. 

Scipio, when he looked upon the city as it was utterly perishing and in the last throes of its complete destruction, is said to have shed tears and wept openly for his enemies. After being wrapped in thought for long, and realizing that all cities, nations, and authorities must, like men, meet their doom; that this happened to Ilium, once a prosperous city, to the empires of Assyria, Media, and Persia, the greatest of their time, and to Macedonia itself, the brilliance of which was so recent, either deliberately or the verses escaping him, he said: 

A day will come when sacred Troy shall perish, And Priam and his people shall be slain. 

And when Polybius speaking with freedom to him, for he was his teacher, asked him what he meant by the words, they say that without any attempt at concealment he named his own country, for which he feared when he reflected on the fate of all things human.

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