Adrian Slatcher
Mean Time
What is the central act of our time?
And will you be there to know it?
A hurricane, downgraded to a storm
Or a meteorite, a million mile whisker from disaster.
Since when did man rely on the natural kind?
Has he not always been more inventive here
Than all the poets and engineers could imagine?
What can nature do to us worse than our own nature does?
So what is the central fear of our time?
And will you be there to feel it?
In your tread, in your shiver,
In your moving under and around it.
The dread that affects not in the momentary chaos
But in the asinine silence between events -
Rushing to our destiny, choleric in our resolve
Unable to function in our normal dysfunctional way.
And what is the central note of our time?
And were you there to hear it?
The long chime, the tortured scale
The words ringing hollow in a tunnel of steel.
With life as it is, reaching a climax every single time,
Wild rumours circulating like infected blood,
And the news today being the only news -
Isolated lies create a pattern more distinctly drawn than truth.
Page(s) 27
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