Friday Poem

Matthew Parris in The Times today wrote about his irritation with mobile phones and BT's so-called "help line". He ended with a poetic piece of prose in which he envisaged a time after the world had been destroyed by nuclear war - not a very pleasant thought but it brought to mind the famous poem by Edwin Muir which also envisaged the world after "the seven days war that put the earth to sleep", "The Horses".

"Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days' war that put the earth to sleep
Late in the evening the strange horses came....."

Parris concluded his lighter take on the event with this passage:

"When the world ends in a radioactive glow, and as toxic raindrops softly fall and dead telephone wires sing in the nuclear wind, and all human life is gone, then scattered among the debris will lie abandoned mobile telephones, lighting up with lonely pings as BT messages blizzard across their broken screens: "an engineer is working on the fault", "we are still aiming to repair the fault", "thank you for your patience".

I thought I might make it into a "Friday Poem":

When the world has been put to sleep
After the seven years war
And the sky is all a radioactive glow,
And as the toxic raindrops softly fall
And the dead telephone wires
Sing in the nuclear wind,
The strange horses will not come this time
To comfort us,
O no:
Scattered among the debris there will be
Those abandoned mobile phones
Lighting up with lonely pings
And a voice will say:
"An engineer is working on the fault",
"Thank you for your patience",
And "this call's important to us here."