Olivetti

 

in the future when the electricity stops

the electronic screens into the world have shutdown

in a darkened room which is sauna hot

where candlelight casts dancing shadows about the wall

I will take my old Olivetti from the cupboard

its old ribbon re-inked with a home made concoction

I will type a poem like this, about the end of civilisation

 

my window will be my last remaining screen

looking out over the encroaching salt marshes

the snaking sea grasses and rushes that rise like spears

the sun, red as a blood orange, will float on the horizon

menacing, as the mouth of a smelter, from my days in the foundry

the reds, oranges and whites of liquid metal

poured spitting anger and fury into a crucible

 

I will wonder what creature will dominate after man

a quivering biological blob, resembling a children’s toy

or some dextrous anthropoidal crustacean, of sharp intelligence

either will do better than man, whose intelligence

became peacock feathers for decorative display, who

unable to adapt, tried to adapt the world to his needs

is now victim of his own evolutionary flaws

 

my poem in a bottle, I will cast into the marshes

where it will survive for countless aeons

until a spidery hand plucks it from the marsh

or maybe digs it up while foraging, eyeballs it in wonder

that what the creature had discovered

looked like the work of some primitive intelligence

a message or maybe a warning, out of the distant past

 

I will sigh and look up at the seemingly permanent stars

which once had a beauty that filled a man with awe

are now mocking him with their indifference

as the tide begins to lap about my feet

the end is no biblical revelation, there is no indignant god

smiting  sinners and sparing the righteous

just incremental disintegration and decay

 

my poem already on its journey into the future

I will open my last bottle of whisky and watch

silver clouds frothing up like boiling mercury

billowing and belching from the underworld

orange-read flames fanned across the swamps and marshes

as a new and yet unknown creature scurries

comfortable in its habitat, across the swamp