A Natural History of Destruction
after W. G. Sebald
All the factories are in ruins,
are shells without a purpose,
walls without supports,
still smoking, after the blitzkrieg
is over,
sirens turned off,
churches made into receptacles
for stained glass elegies,
images without purpose,
now that the skies
are empty,
clouds blackened by soot,
even the sun diminished,
without heat to expend
upon such useless ornaments
as these: the children dressed
in their Sunday best clothes,
sailor suits with torn pockets,
soiled pants and grimy shirts,
as they sit and dig in their
ash pits, shaped as sand boxes were,
in another lifetime, when excavating
on grounds like this was not
grave digging, but, play;
this is not how the day began
but this is how it will end.
Alan Catlin has been publishing since the seventies; from the mimeos to the Internet. His latest full length book of poems is “Alien Nation.” He is currently working on a sequel to that book under the working title of, “Beautiful Mutants.”