The Four Horsemen
Nothing was too small to start so much.
The revelation was somewhere in between:
A breath, a thought, a shiver felt before a touch
Which tells you just how much the world has grown,
With all its intricacy and excrescences:
Flesh — fat and vulnerable — and rocks turned wise
With weather. While, wide ahead, the desert dances
In its greedy heat and whitens in surprise
At mirage images. And people swarm,
Breeding money in vaults, offices and dark bedrooms.
And harbours with boats bemused by calm
Await the ferreting claw of storms.
And in towns, where bombs explode, the question comes
In fragments, mouthed by voices lost to reason,
Through endless, mirrored, interconnecting rooms,
Where the horsemen give no answer but gallop on.
by Joe Hyam
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Apocalyptic, rich description, and a rich voice to match. “Breeding money” is quite timely, making me smile, a spot of humour within a nightmare.
Some good images (the ferreting claw of storms.), but I wasn’t sure about bemused by calm
I like the progression from stanza to stanza building the tension and becoming increasingly more familar to modern experience. The sense of a world ripe for apocalypse comes over very effectively. Great intensity too. I like “rocks turned wise with weather” and the bedroom and harbour images sit nicely together.