title: Old Days
date: 2016-06-03T02:44:44Z
author: Wynn Wolf Arbor

In the lowland of the taiga;  
And vast forests boreal  
Midst wapiti and wild reindeer,  
Lynx, stoat, squirrel, snowshoe, brown bear,  
Lives a hermit in remembrance  
Of old days and the explosion.  

Green the firs, bicoloured birches  
Waving proudly in light wind;  
Poplars shedding crimson catkins.  
And the hermit, longing, silent  
Standing lonely on the brink  
Of tundra, opens weary eyes and sees.  

Oak trees bending, whipping back;  
Barks then tinged by hellish fire,  
Songbirds in a sky of black.  
The mushroom cloud, the ball of red:  
People fleeing, hoping, dying,  
To the church walls shadows burnt.  

In the seas the water boiling,  
Blistering from the reflection  
Of the short-lived man-made sun.  
Uriel in heaven crying,  
Mourning loss of the creation  
That, in war, unmade itself.  

No more seasons, only winter;  
Everlasting winter, with grey soot  
Like snowflakes falling gently  
Down to blackened soil; a Hell  
on Earth, forever dead and frozen.  
Upon mankind a shadow cast.  

So the hermit with his gas mask,  
Breathing filters and asbestos  
Makes his way, past sickly tree stumps,  
Past the rotten flesh, past poison  
Past the hollow shells of old  
Through miasma to catharsis;  

Through the lowland of the taiga;  
In vast graveyards boreal  
Midst wapiti and dead reindeer,  
Lynx, stoat, squirrel, snowshoe, brown bear,  
Through miasma past the tombstones  
Past the unmarked grave and carcass.  

Face turned west another fire,  
Older still than the creation;  
Shimmering subtly, orange, crimson  
Through the clouds and casting rays  
Upon the rolling hills afar,  
Lights like ghostly sirens calling.  

And the harp, resurging music,  
Calming shadows, living beings,  
Forests, meadows, nature, beauty!  
From that subtle light display  
Made the hermit so resentful  
And envious of death's embrace.  

Far away inside a bunker  
Beneath the old charred earth forgotten  
Lies dormant in a silo still  
The array of rockets primed;  
Awaiting silent, patient, stoic  
An end, and the explosion.