Mare Marginis

Was that not it? In our formative years,
Hardly begun when the old men settled
Into wistful jingo (having never had it so good),
Time wove its spell on them, drew its veil,
Washed us all in their cold water tomorrows.

For water, the tide rising and falling, liquid,
Drowns and then deserts the strandline;
Water, we tell ourselves, under some bridge
Over the torrent of years, wasted now,
Or the stuff of tears dried upon our faces.

There is no going back. I can’t find
My hillside where childhood ebbed
Nor find the place, neither ben nor glen,
Where first I stepped away from youth.

There is no going back. You know
The past is an alien world; now, you and I,
Alien, or worse, grow indistinct,
Shadowy figures, sketchy shapes, etched,
Attenuated ghosts in fading twilight.

We have become marginal, becalmed beyond
The restive sea; one world dissolved into another,
This world into the next; time’s unexpectedly sly wink
Dismisses us with a nod.

Don’t you see how we deluded ourselves
Thinking our pens were pointing fingers
Underlining the end of history? Ours, the sin of pride,
Hubris as the walls we scratched on fell in?

We thought we had understood what it was
To be modern in modern times, to be modern
After so many old wars; This new order, we believed,
Was something real and not humanity’s past disfigured
By the fashion for hope while humanity’s history repeats,
Repeating and repeating and repeating.

We are the rags of stolen riches, the torn cloth
Of well-made things damaged beyond repair.
We stood on the boundary once and thought it
The centre of all things, thought it would hold,
One last time.

Equilibrium shifts, balance tilts, continents
Drift over magma; molten heat beneath
Erupts till the crust moves on, leaving debris
A crater’s edge and lava domes
Anticipating weakness.

© BH, 2017

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Another part of a longer work. There are a few poems here from it, some with amended names, some not. This is a second bearing the name of one of the lunar maria. In this case the name translates as 'Sea of the Edge'. Even after several years the longer work remains unfinished. What's new, eh?