Desecration

 

The desecration tears up the earth, scalds the grass and enflames the treetops. Windows shatter together in highrises, the vacuum punch  turning them to charnels. Already the model dinosaurs of iron treadle across custom lines and into the countryside they intend to lay waste. They will join the wreckage over time. Many will explode by roadsides, their belly inhabitants lost names in someone else’s ground plan. Planes overhead are only going one way. It’s an ad hoc tik tok shock and awe war, the posts of the most close-ups coloured of the desecration for the online to flick through. Rivers also of broken bridges and highways of ruined trespass. Those who enjoyed last Christmas in their own warm interiors trudge to the borders in dishevelled lines, carrying their dogs, leaving behind a sudden ended lifetime to the fortunes of lost and found. The scatter of valuables is passing thoughts. Images of villages fall apart to the sameness of war, the deadly arithmetic of seized lands. The presentiments of imminent desecration leave city streets empty, long before curfew. Odesa tests the mood of early spring, Kyiv awaits what no one can guess. An entire theatre of diplomats make statements that are not dialogue, here on the safe side of the ocean. Statements that next week may have no force at all. The poison has never been anyone’s choice but the poisoner’s. No one and anyone sees him spiking the drink of his loyal opponent, a hospital regular. That other face turns green on the news screen. His bumbling spies could not kill their target, for trying, in the prestigious city of Salisbury. Therefore, what else is the poisoner but one who poisons everything impeding his ambition? It is his drug of choice, his favourite mixer, the final opiate for his kind of people. He has never kept it a secret, it’s a style he’s adopted from strongman history. For he will threaten to unscrew the vial of nuclear desecration. His orders will be undertaken by youths too young to remember what such clouds and winds have laid desolate. Such witnesses to the final clouds live disfigured to talk it through. His orders are signed off on a long table white as a superyacht, empty of guests or friends. Poison is his comrade, till all minds see the effects, downloading the latest updates day and night, scanning the worst, objecting to a polluted opinion. To resist the offer of poison is easy. To stand back is not everyone’s choice. To cease from desecration could be a word at the right time. Ceasing is the option. Stopping is the step. Withdrawing is the way forward. A tyrant has no time for thought. While the streets are free it’s time to take a walk and clear the head. The text for the hour is ‘Sufficient unto the day …’