Ragnarök
After Milosz
When it comes, and it will, it will come on
a plain weekday, perhaps in early spring
or autumn, a frowsy day, one that woke late
and got dressed in a hurry without care
quite forgetting
to comb its hair, which anyway got damp
in the almost rain. When it comes the slugs
will have been on the lettuces again,
chiselling their sickle moons; starlings will sit
like notes on a stave while below them men spray
hectares of grain
with a lake of liquid manure. A snake
will riffle its green belt through the fern stems
and the flies will alight on a dead shrew.
When it comes a young woman will be
formatting the numbers in her spreadsheet
as she scrolls through
a list of annual reports. The bond
salesman will have made the biggest trade
of his career; sparrows will jive outside
in the puddles; fungi will start to fling
armfuls of spores into the air; a young
rabbit will hide
shaking from the hounds. And when it comes
the man in the fourteenth-floor flat, the one
the other tenants never see, will pop
a pill and think again of his dead child.
The women walking in the park behind
their prams will stop
to hear the song unfurl through the window.
The slaughtermen will have stained their gloves red
with slick, bright blood; tectonic plates will move
under the sea a fraction of an inch
and cause no harm; a poet will write sadly
of his lost love
and pick his nose. The President will put
the final touches to the plan for peace.
Don’t be surprised then if you fail to spot
the golden ranks of heroes or the massed
brigades of ogres. These days they wear grey
and look a lot
like each other. But they remain heroes
and ogres, and their swords gleam in their bags.
A one-eyed man will pull on his broad-brimmed hat
and stalk away. Please don’t expect a warning.
This is a whimper not a bang. But it’s
a whimper that
will level hills and drown the suffering world.
Ross Cogan has published two collections, Stalin’s Desk and The Book I Never Wrote, with Oversteps; a third, Bragr, from which this poem is taken, was released by Seren on 2nd July. He gained a Ph.D. in Philosophy and works as a writer/researcher, as well as being a Director of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. A Gregory Award winner, he has won the Exeter, Frogmore, Cannon Sonnet and Staple Prizes, and been placed in others, including the Troubadour. His poetry has appeared in a number of magazines, including Poetry London, PN Review, New Welsh Review, Rialto, Orbis and Stand