In front of the fire
With you, the folk song
Of the wind in the chimney and the sparks’
Embroidery of the soot – eternity
Is here in this small room
In intervals that our love
Widens; and outside
Us is time and the victims
Of time, travellers
To a new Bethlehem, statesmen
And scientists with their hands full
Of the gifts that destroy.
by R. S. Thomas
from H’m (1972)
No more Europe, no more America.
The end of Tsarskoye, of Moscow, too.
A fit of nuclear hysteria –
life atomized into a radiant blue.
Transparent, all-forgiving haze will stretch
over the seas. And he who could have done
something yet chose not to, will be left
in the expanse of pre-eternity, alone.
by Георгий Владимирович Иванов (Georgii Vladimirovich Ivanov)
(1953)
by Robert Chandler
Rambling At The Bridge Head 