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 may 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 it’s 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,


While what is wrong is the right attitude.


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