THE LAST DAY
A Lament
I dreamed that I woke to a beautiful wash of dawn sunlight, knowing this was the last day.
Outside, acres of meadow flowers blanketed the foothills, a resplendent gown encircling craggy limestone juts. The air was balmy with a faint cool bite in the dappled shade. Busy songbirds chirped and whistled in the hedgerows, and in the scattered copses linked by the weave of dry stone walls.
And I thought - remember this. Remember this beauty that will be gone tomorrow, along with us, along with everything, because a few vain men thought nothing of it, and nothing of us, when measured against themselves.
'For a scrap of land.
For a well.
For a prime location along the wend of a crystalline river.
For a hole in the ground straight down to a pool of black gold.
For the gladly-given to begat only cruelty.
For a crown.
For these, no hand extended in kindness.
No mercies plied.
He raised monuments to his Pyrrhic victories,
and feared not the flames when he died.'
Gerard Pointon