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Lit Up | Poetry
Abyssinia
Saint Isidore the Labourer
Yeah, I’ll be seeing you
in all the sweet, familiar places
where the leaves fall in autumn gales;
but before that comes to pass
come, with me, see,
sweet Isidore’s pink marble walls;
come, look over the walls
over the remains of a huge flood plain
filled with white flowers,
thousands and thousands of them,
to where the plain
forms a great blue mirror to the sky
and, in this mirror to the sky, we see the image
of a fragment hidden in a dream
of Kubla Khan.
No pleasure dome this
the sky’s a mirror where we can
merely see the ragged remains
of man’s destruction of all
we love: hills, gardens, trees
gone.
The remains of earth a savage place still
torn apart by greed: lifeless oceans
prophesy war. The earth no longer
a miracle of rare device is alight.
The Abyssinian maid
long in her grave,
drowned in the milk
of paradise
