When the Time Comes

Galaxies are fermenting in soup tins
Where one shuttle ends another begins
While wyrd systers start weaving red banners
Removal of hearts requires cold spanners
And a surgical spoon woven from grass
Owners of property contrive to pass
Through helium smiles as if the broad moon
Is only significant as a rune
Explaining how rocks may be defeated
How oceans might have to be deleted
How mountains shall be humbled, how a gorge
Might well be remembered as the last forge
Whereat Vulcan clattered and Wayland Smith
Hammered intricate lattice-work of myth
Speaking nothing of history rather
Telling the future is always farther
Away than is usually suggested
As it’s there hypotheses are tested
And one magnificent monument raised
On a plinth of ice, on a weak day praised
For the observation of lassitude
Which is sad, of course, and joyful, of course
When the book is written and yet the source
Is not even mentioned despite the sound
Of weeping becoming ever profound
Amongst atheists who learn to insist
The nothing they are sure of does not exist
So bring sandwich bags for the parapets
To keep certain revolutionaries
Unsure of what the latest wind carries
Now doctors are consulting flights of birds
Letting ministers explain why huge herds
Of pint glasses dashed against cobblestones
Is final confirmation no one owns
A single garden statue worth coaching
And that stars are just headlamps approaching,

                                                   Dave Alton