( A warning from the grave)

An angry wind whips the trees, tears the leaves,

Claws them down, throws them up,

Then beats them through the air-Enraged,

So angry mobs like storms will come,

Upon the ones who reign ,

Who love, like flies, decay and death-

We know them from their stench,

The miseries they have made-

But what will be, this angry mob,

Of the left, or of the right,

A million Che Guevara’s or Mussolini’s spawn,

Bred in beds of ignorance and lousy with their hate,

Bringing worse upon us still, and with an iron fist?

The storm has come upon us, there’s thunder in the air,

Zola, now is never read, Neruda is reviled,

Saramago showed the Blindness, Sinclair, the Jungle of their kind,

Capital is forgotten and all the truth therein,

Where are they our heroes, when now we need them more?

Mac The Knife is back in power and works in dark of night,

And where are you my comrades, are you on the barricades,

Or wrapped in sad, self-pity, in doubt of what you are,

Caring more for you and yours, and less for us and ours?

An angry wind is coming, so get your selves prepared,

Be warned, and act, my comrades, or end up on your knees.

October is upon us and soon November’s dreary days,

As if the days of June were dreams, its promises a haze,

The leaves descend and swirl about, in yellow, orange, red,

While clouds hang low in moody skies, and old folk seek their bed,

A voice calls out and asks for tea, as day leads into night,

Footsteps pass the windowsill, of children, out of sight,

Calling up old memories, of that day you held my hand,

Walking on the riverbank, or listening to the band,

That played their weekly concert, and made us all so smile,

We felt the urge to dance again, and did so, for a while,

Made pledges we could never keep, no matter how we tried,

For other clouds soon gathered and I crossed the ocean wide,

Our letters stopped, our lives went on, as if we’d never been,

And now, I hear this winter, will be one we’ve never seen.

Where last we met was a shallowing stream,

And over it’s course leaned a wise oak tree,

And all seemed well, as though in a dream,

Yet there, again, we never would be.

Passers-by now feel a deep sombre mood,

As though a sad spectre, lonely, there stands,

Longing for her, the one he once wooed

With talk of the seas, and far travelled lands.

Some hear a whisper, as if called out to stop,

Others see phantasms floating through leaves,

From which drip tears, drop after drop,

As if Nature for Love and lovers bereaves;

Some see a shadow man rising to reach for the hand,

Of the woman who waits, as if unaware,

Haunted and haunting in a dark ghostly land,

Few stay there for long, for few wish to dare.

But I see a place, now barren, decayed, 

Of a life torn apart, it now seems to me,

And though all seemed well, as once in a dream,

It is where, again, we never can be.

I don’t look up much, no, not anymore,

No reason, really, to a wide empty sky,

Oh, what was it like? You’re right well to ask,

But where are the words, it’s right hard to describe,

Emptiness now, where once was plenitude of life-

But now-

Yes, the clouds are fair, or threatening, still,

Dark hovering one day, delighting the next,

Throwing daggers of light with cannonic sound,

Or arches of colour, like a child fairy’s dream,

But the swirling flocks that once danced above,

It’s been some years now since I saw the like,

And this year and last, in autumn and spring,

Search as I might, none flew south, and none north again,

Yet, in my time, they covered the heavens, for many a day,

But the insects have gone, the fields and the trees,

So they have too.  And the bats? 

Oh, they stopped coming two year ago.

No, I don’t look up much, no, not anymore,

There’s little to see, and I don’t like to cry.