After Milosz<\/em><\/p>\nWhen it comes, and it will, it will come on
\na plain weekday, perhaps in early spring
\nor autumn, a frowsy day, one that woke late
\nand got dressed in a hurry without care
\nquite forgetting
\nto comb its hair, which anyway got damp<\/p>\n
in the almost rain. When it comes the slugs
\nwill have been on the lettuces again,
\nchiselling their sickle moons; starlings will sit
\nlike notes on a stave while below them men spray
\nhectares of grain
\nwith a lake of liquid manure. A snake<\/p>\n
will riffle its green belt through the fern stems
\nand the flies will alight on a dead shrew.
\nWhen it comes a young woman will be
\nformatting the numbers in her spreadsheet
\nas she scrolls through
\na list of annual reports. The bond<\/p>\n
salesman will have made the biggest trade
\nof his career; sparrows will jive outside
\nin the puddles; fungi will start to fling
\narmfuls of spores into the air; a young
\nrabbit will hide
\nshaking from the hounds. And when it comes<\/p>\n
the man in the fourteenth-floor flat, the one
\nthe other tenants never see, will pop
\na pill and think again of his dead child.
\nThe women walking in the park behind
\ntheir prams will stop
\nto hear the song unfurl through the window.<\/p>\n
The slaughtermen will have stained their gloves red
\nwith slick, bright blood; tectonic plates will move
\nunder the sea a fraction of an inch
\nand cause no harm; a poet will write sadly
\nof his lost love
\nand pick his nose. The President will put<\/p>\n
the final touches to the plan for peace.
\nDon\u2019t be surprised then if you fail to spot
\nthe golden ranks of heroes or the massed
\nbrigades of ogres. These days they wear grey
\nand look a lot
\nlike each other. But they remain heroes<\/p>\n
and ogres, and their swords gleam in their bags.
\nA one-eyed man will pull on his broad-brimmed hat
\nand stalk away. Please don\u2019t expect a warning.
\nThis is a whimper not a bang. But it\u2019s
\na whimper that
\nwill level hills and drown the suffering world.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\nRoss Cogan<\/strong> has published two collections, Stalin\u2019s Desk<\/em> and The Book I Never Wrote<\/em>, with Oversteps; a third, Bragr<\/em><\/a>, from which this poem is taken, was released by\u00a0 Seren \u00a0on 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 <\/em>and Stand<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ragnar\u00f6k 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16723"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16726,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16723\/revisions\/16726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}